Clarisse Thorn

I write and speak about subcultures, sexuality, and new media.

Over the summer, I wrote a 3500-word piece about masculinity. It touched on some themes I’ve messed around with before, most notably in my reviews of the Sex+++ documentaries “Private Dicks: Men Exposed” and “Boy I Am.” I fondly hoped that I might be able to do something “real” with it, but I’ve gotten rather immersed in my work here in Africa — and I’ve been having some trouble keeping up with America, due to irregular Internet access. Today, I managed to catch up with some of my blogroll and saw that Audacia Ray recently posted some thoughts about masculinity, including excellent links to various new frontiers in the masculinity conversation. Looks like the topic is really heating up — finally! I’ve been obsessing about it off and on for years, and it’s exciting to think that people might finally talk to me about it.

So, rather than letting my masculinity piece languish under a rug — since I’ll probably never be able to do anything official with it before the conversation moves on, anyway — I’m just going to serialize it here. (I’d post the whole thing at once, but I don’t want to inflict 3500 words on everyone’s blog reader!)

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Questions I Want To Ask Entitled Cis Het Men, Part 1: Who Cares?

Why do I care about masculinity?

I’m rather perverted, but not enormously queer. I present as femme, and — although I’ve been known to tease my sensitive (frequently long-haired) lovers for being “unmasculine” — I fall in love with men. I’m hardly one to go for the “manly man” type, but at heart, I love knowing that I’m fucking a man.

However, because I’m cis and straight, I feel profoundly at a loss when trying to articulate problems of (for lack of a better phrase) “Men’s Empowerment”. The issues don’t feel “native” to me; I’ve intersected with these questions mainly through the lens of lovers and friends. Watching their struggle is demoralizing, but trying to imagine how I can give them feedback is more demoralizing.

A male friend once wrote to me, “I think you personally find expressions of masculinity hot, but you also have no patience with sexism. You’ve caught on that it’s tricky for men to figure out how to deliver both of these things you need, that you don’t have a lot of good direction to give to fellas about it, and that neither does anyone else.”

So:How can men be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine?

On top of my limited perspective, there’s been an echoing lack of discourse — that is, very little mainstream acknowledgement of the problems of masculinity. The primary factor in that silence is that normative cis men themselves tend to be flatly unwilling to discuss gender/sex issues. Often, their first objection is that the discussion is neither important nor relevant. This is true even within subcultures centered around sexual analysis, like the BDSM world — I once met a cis male BDSMer who said, “Why bother talking about male sexuality? It’s the norm. Fish don’t have a word for water.”

But if masculine sexuality is water and we’re fish, why doesn’t that motivate us to examine it more — not less?

Don’t get me wrong: I agree that America’s sexual conceptions are centered around stereotypical male sexuality, and I agree that this is damaging and problematic. Believe me, I’m furious that it took me many years to reconceive “actual” sex around acts other than good ole penis-in-vagina penetration! But if American stereotypes and ideas of sexuality are male-centered, then surely that makes it more useful for us to be thinking about male sexuality — not less.

And those male-centered ideas of sexuality aren’t centered around all men — just stereotypical men. LGBTQ men are obvious examples whose sexuality falls outside the norm; fortunately for them, they’ve created some spaces to discuss that. But there are lots of other non-normative guys who aren’t gay or queer, yet feel very similar sexual alienation — and because there’s so little discourse about masculinity outside LGBTQ circles, they usually just don’t talk about it.

What does it mean to be a cis het man whose sexuality isn’t normative? Which straight cis guys don’t fit — and hence, feel alienated from — our current overarching sexual stereotypes?

Guys who identify as straight BDSM submissives are one fabulous example of non-normative men who are frequently alienated from mainstream masculine sexuality, but who often don’t have a forum. Men with small penises are a second. There are lots of others. In the words of sex blogger and essayist Thomas Millar: “The common understanding of male sexuality is a stereotype, an ultra-narrow group of desires and activities oriented around PIV [penis-in-vagina], anal intercourse and blowjobs; oriented around cissexual women partners having certain very narrow groups of physical characteristics.”

Still, that doesn’t mean that straight, dominant, big-dicked dudes who love boning thin chicks feel totally okay about the current state of affairs. It just means they tend to have less immediate motivation to question it. They also have less of an eye for spotting gender oppression, because — though they’ve got their own boxes hemming them in — they’re still more privileged than the rest of us, and the nature of privilege is to blind the privileged class to its existence.

A male submissive once told me, “Lots of heteronormative men know something is wrong with the way we think about sex and gender. I can see them struggling with it when we talk. They can’t put their finger on it; they have a hard time engaging it. But I engage it all the time; I have to, because my sexuality opposes it.”

When is it to a man’s advantage to examine and question masculinity and stereotypes of male sexuality? Which men are motivated to do so?

It’s tempting to assert that men whose desires fit neatly (or at least mostly) within the stereotype have it made — after all, their sexuality works within the norm so many of us struggle to escape. But I’ve had this assumption corrected several times, usually by smart “stereotypical” men themselves. At one point, while developing a sexuality workshop, I sent the outline to a bunch of friends. The original draft contained this paragraph: “Our sexual scripts favor a certain stereotype of men and male sexual pleasure, which makes it hard for women to figure out what we really want and what we really enjoy, and also makes it harder for non-stereotypical men to figure that out.” One friend sent that paragraph back, having quietly appended: “… as well as for stereotypical men to discover or explore new desires beyond the stereotypical script.”

When we discuss the limitations around sexuality from a non-normative perspective, how do we exclude normative people who might develop themselves in new directions if they had the chance? What do normative men stand to gain by thinking outside the box about masculinity and sexuality?

173 responses to “Questions I Want To Ask Entitled Cis Het Men, Part 1: Who Cares?”

I have struggled with the question of masculinity and what it is and isn’t my whole life. I’m short, slight of build and not particularly athletic. I also have a low sex drive anyway. For those reasons alone, I am excluded from the normative sexual landscape. On top of that, I gender-identify as bigendered – which is still a relatively new and unknown piece of the transgender pie.

Even with all of that outside perspective, I still can’t tell you what masculinity is, only that I rarely am. I also struggle with the predominant desire of cis straight women for rugged paragons of masculinity (that I can never be) coupled with the intellectual and emotional intimacy that has evolutionarily developed in Beta Males (and that I can provide).

I can’t add a lot to the discussion, honestly, but I am glad that someone is discussing it. I think that the assumption amongst people who discuss this sort of thing has been that since white het cis males are in the privileged position (in the US) that they have no issues worth viewing or addressing.

2) I’m really glad you’re talking about this. I feel that you bring a lot of thought and coherence to whatever issues you discuss and this is definitely a topic that could use some of that. I am reminded of a relationship I had with a couple (a bisexual woman and a heterosexual man) and the issues and occasional resentment that arose around how the man perceived he was being treated because of his gender. I knew that some of my behaviors were less-good, but I didn’t know how to change them and he knew that he didn’t like *something* but it was hard for him to articulate and to protest.

Any dialogue like this that can give a group (including the majority) the words to express their feelings and needs is a good and valuable one. Looking forward to the next installment.

@collegecate: Right, that’s what gets me the most — knowing that my own behavior isn’t great, and not having a clue how to change it. For instance, I mention here that I’ve sometimes teased my lovers for being “unmasculine”; in retrospect I feel guilty about it, because I think men have a much harder time establishing / defending / dealing with masculinity than women do with femininity. I didn’t realize how much I might actually be making them feel anxious, because no one ever talks about male anxieties!

@Clarisse Well, I think if the partners in question didn’t particularly care whether they were seen as masculine or not, then no harm done. But if it was something they were self-conscious about, then… yeah, I can see feeling bad about that. My girl, who identified as “95% lesbian” prior to getting in a relationship with me, frequently tells me that she loves me for my “girlish figure.” I’m quite aware that I don’t have a big buff body, but that’s also not what she likes, so it’s her way of telling me that she finds me physically attractive. So I find it endearing and it actually makes me feel good. It’s basically saying, “You’re not the normative model of male-ness, but there are people who find the normative model to be unappealing, and you to be appealing.”

Thank you for addressing these issues, Clarisse. As you point out, while mainstream male sexuality is certainly abundantly obvious all around us, it (and its variants) don’t always get explored in an honest way.

I’ll give you another example of a cis het man who doesn’t feel adequately represented by mainstream sexuality, one that you allude to tangentially: the man who likes women who are much larger and heavier than the average. The mainstream tells him that he and his beloved are only a subject fit for comedy, and if he were a “real man” he could get a much better-looking woman…about the best the two of them are likely to get out of the deal is an acknowledgement that “he must really love her” (because obviously he can’t appreciate her looks).

As a cis het male, I’ll give it a go:How men can be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine?

I think they need to realise that masculinity is a broad and flexible concept with no real authority. Examining the wide range of attributes that have been a part of masculinity across cultures and throughout history it should be possible to come up with a set that is significantly masculine while being ethical and compatible with progressive ideals.

if masculine sexuality is water and we’re fish, why doesn’t that motivate us to examine it more — not less? — When is it to a man’s advantage to examine and question masculinity and stereotypes of male sexuality? Which men are motivated to do so?

It takes a fair amount of courage to examine something that is core to your own identity. I think that the problems with the current state of masculinity (your question appears quite American centric) need to be challenged from within a framework of masculinity in a way that doesn’t challenge the identity of those who identify with masculinity. I think this is one reason why feminists have such little success in engaging on such topics. That is to say it’s not something that needs to be done by men per se, but rather arguments need to be formed by appealing to alternate masculine values instead of attacking (or appearing to attack) masculinity as a whole. It should certainly not be treated as the homogeneous misogynous culture that many feminists seem to see it as.

I think the ones with the strongest motivation to examine question masculinity are those who identify with masculinity but not with the undesirability qualities that are common within the many socially dominate definitions of masculinity. I think it’s important to note that many of these men (myself included) will disagree with as many aspects of feminism as they do with mainstream masculinity. If feminists want to support a movement to change masculinity I think they’ll need to tolerate these differences.

What does it mean to be a cis het man whose sexuality isn’t normative? Which straight cis guys don’t fit — and hence, feel alienated from — our current overarching sexual stereotypes?
I can probably only partly respond to this question as I don’t see myself as normative but my default behaviour around people generally is normative. So I don’t feel alienated from normative culture but I do have distaste for the way non-normative behaviour is looked down on. Although I don’t see myself as normative I do see myself as masculine, aspiring to have what I see as the ethical attributes of masculinity. I’ve never really accepted anything the way it is so I guess my masculinity is something I’ve formed myself, and masculinity in generally is not something I see as a requisite for men to be accepted.

When we discuss the limitations around sexuality from a non-normative perspective, how do we exclude normative people who might develop themselves in new directions if they had the chance? What do normative men stand to gain by thinking outside the box about masculinity and sexuality?

I think there’s a big difference between the range of sexualities that is considered normal, and the sexuality that is ascribed to men through stereotypes. The many normative men do have something to gain from challenging the stereotypes. I think it’d be easier to communicate ones non-stereotypical sexuality if sexuality were discussed openly as variable/a spectrum rather than a set of discrete options.

OK – you say you want to reach cis het men who don’t necessarily identify as feminists. Among them might be men who identify as “feminist critics” and maybe even a few self-proclaimed MRAs. You might also include men (like myself) who have a decidedly mixed relationship with feminism.

And yet I see over on Audacia Ray’s blog you post a link to the NOMAS website, and other things I read here indicate some sympathy for that perspective. It seems that the kind of model of pro-feminism you and people like Thomas Millar and Shira Tarrant are offering up is a slightly warmed-over version of the kind of incredibly hostile (not to mention erotophobic) anti-masculinism espoused by John Stoltenberg, Robert Jensen, Jackson Katz and the like.

If you’re trying to open men up to feminism, you’ve certainly espoused entirely the wrong model and *really* need to rethink it. But if you really believe this is the kind of pro-feminism men *should* espouse, but it just needs to be marketed differently, then this project is doomed. NOMAS feminism is the enemy of men and male sexuality. I speak for many men when I say we’re not drinking the Koolaid.

My apologies, because I see I misidentified *you* as the person who posted the link to NOMAS over at Audacia’s.

Nevertheless, my point still stands, if not specifically about you. It does seem that much the conversation about masculinity I’ve seen come up recently on ostensibly “sex-positive” blogs is very heavily derived from NOMAS, Robert Jensen, and the like. Shira Tarrant, most notably, who’s a close collaborator with Katz and Jensen.

Ostensibly = otherwise sex-positive, but suddenly having made love for the Robert Jensen model of porn when the discussion turns to men.

It reads to me like a two-tier system of sex-positivity. Women get to reject sex-shaming, get to have their sexual choices honored, and their pleasure validated. When it comes to male sexuality, it seems to be back to hairshirts and Dworkin. Robert Jensen’s “Getting Off” is a “sex-positive” take on pornography? Shira Tarrant sure seems to think so, and I have yet to see anybody in the sex-positive feminist milieu give her anything but an implicit endorsement.

Ostensibly, as in, not sex-positive = Yes Means Yes central figure Thomas Millar’s embrace of censorship and criminalizing legal strategies derived from anti-porn feminism, such as “Nordic model” laws on prostitution, Dworkin-MacKinnon “civil rights” laws on pornography, and like nonsense. This was one of the main things that sex-positive feminism was campaigning *against* when it first arose. Obviously there was more to sex-positive feminism than sexual libertarianism, but it was an important part of it, especially in its approach to legislation. Throw that vital aspect out, and I think you’re really talking about something other than sex-positivity. Not to mention, throwing a lot of people under a bus by criminalizing their behavior.

So, yes, I think those are some real issues that deserve some discussion. On one hand, I see in your earlier posts holding out an olive branch to men. On the other hand, I’m also looking at feminism in general that is looking more inherently hostile toward men and sexuality than any time since the late 70s. I’d like to be wrong on this, but if not, I think the likelihood for feminism reaching out in broad coalitions is less likely than ever.

I also want to note that for most blogs in question, the phrase “otherwise sex positive” would be better phrasing of my thoughts than “ostensibly sex positive”. In the case of Shira Tarrant or Thomas Millar, and perhaps a few others, I do stick to the phrase “ostensibly sex positive” applies. I don’t think Dworkin/MacKinnon style feminism can ever be called “sex-positive” and I resent feminists who are trying to rebrand it as such.

@iamcuriousblue: Forgive me, but I’m relatively new to the feminist blogosphere (and indeed, I don’t have a lot of exposure to scholarly feminism in general). By which I mean, can you summarize Shira Tarrant’s viewpoint?

I have yet to find a Thomas Millar point that I completely disagree with (although I sometimes disagree with his implementation, as noted in part 3 of this masculinity series). On the other hand, I don’t recall reading anything where he discusses porn. Do you have any links?

I don’t think that feminism cloned from Dworkin or MacKinnon can be sex-positive, but I do think that a lot of extremely sex-positive ideas owe a huge debt to them: e.g., modern BDSM heavy emphasis on exact consent; an understanding of porn that acknowledges that mainstream porn has some seriously problematic biases/cultural baggage; an understanding of penetrative vaginal sex that recognizes that it’s got some problematic biases/cultural baggage attached. These are usually the things that I see Thomas Millar arguing — not that e.g. Dworkin was totally right, but that she made some useful albeit incomplete points that we can build on.

I’ll take on the latter points about sex-positive ideas that supposedly owe a debt to Dworkin and MacKinnon. (You do realize that sex-positive feminism goes back about as far as Dworkin’s and largely arose in opposition to it, right?)

BDSM put a heavy emphasis on safe words and consent going back to 70s BDSM culture before practically anybody had heard of Dworkin. This did not stop Dworkin and other radical feminists from attacking BDSM. Why BDSM should now be seen as owing a “debt” to Dworkin for a culture that evolved independently, and with a lot of grief from, Dworkin, is nonsensical.

The phrasing of “mainstream” porn is a dodge. Its basically a resurrection of the 1980s radical feminist “porn vs erotica” dichotomy. I see essentially no substantial difference with the “mainstream vs feminist porn” dichotomy, and the kneejerk and blanket condemnation of the former. I see very little of that condemnation that doesn’t come across as a blanket condemnation of cis het male fantasy. This goes well beyond simply pointing out the problematic cultural baggage found in much “mainstream” porn.

Shira Tarrant makes a similar blanket condemnation of “mainstream porn” in her most recent book, and largely gets her analysis from Robert Jensen’s “Getting Off”, which she quite specifically name-checks. Tarrant, in a recent talk she gave, calls her blanket condemnation of mainstream porn a “sex-positive” critique. Well, sorry, but I’ve read Jensen’s “Getting Off”, and other work by him as well, and I’d say he’s pretty damn far from “sex-positive”. In fact, I’d say getting past his feminist and pro-gay and lesbian rhetoric, he’s actually pretty damn conservative when it comes to sex.

Similarly with an attack on penetrative hetero sex. Yes, it has a lot of baggage with being treated as the penultimate form of sex and with a sexual hierarchy being constructed around it. But intercourse, m/f blowjobs, and other such targets of the wrath of some feminists are in most cases an enjoyable and consensual act, and something I don’t see heterosexuals writing off anytime soon. Condemning it doesn’t come across as “sex positive” to me.

On a related note, I’d refer you to some current sex-positive discussion of celibacy. (I’ll put up some links later.) Now abstinence has some really problematic anti-sex cultural baggage, especially in this age of abstinence education. But it would be wrong to go from that to condemning genuinely asexual people as making a bad sexual choice. And in my book, ditto for “socially dominant” acts like intercourse.

My ultimate problem with Millar, though, isn’t that he carves out a middle position between Dworkin and sex-positivity, but his embrace of Dworkin/MacKinnon legal strategies. That crosses a definite line to me, and it that gets to be called sex-positivity now, than the term is meaningless.

So, yeah, I do have a problem with this revisionist take on sex-positivity, where Dworkin’s ideas are repackaged as sex-positivity, and NOMAS (Robert Jensen, Jackson Katz, Jon Stoltenberg, etc) is a shining example of sex-positive masculinity.

I’ll note that I’m not trying to push a narrow, dogmatic view of sex-positivity. Its always been a highly varied set of ideas, held together by a general idea of positive attitude toward sex and a tolerant attitude toward the many variations on sexuality. But to not be dogmatic does not mean embracing outright revisionism, where the original concept is stretched to include its very opposite.

You have the advantage of me in any history discussion. I said the thing about BDSM consent emphasis because that’s what I’ve heard from different people I respect, but it may not be true, and I don’t have the background to argue the point.

Who’s blanket-condemning mainstream porn? Or penetrative sex? Or celibacy, for that matter? (I’m hoping my sex-positive film series — or rather, the sex+ film series that used to be mine — will screen the asexuality doc when it comes out!) I’m opposed to blanket condemnation too, but that doesn’t mean I’ll quit pointing out that there are issues wrapped up in these things. I feel like it’s possible that I just don’t have the context to discuss this with you, but I’d like to, because I get the feeling that you’re lumping me (and someone I admire) in with some other group from your previous experience.

I haven’t read a lot here before attempting to answer your questions, but I do have the feeling that you are indeed asking an honest question.

Personally, I think a lot of feminist critical theory is epistemologically useless, but still worth considering. Privilege isn’t a useful concept to see the world through, except if you are playing oppression olympics, which a lot of feminists do. So, after that disclaimer, I’m going to disregard that issue for the moment and try to answer your questions from my personal point of view.

How men can be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine?

By realising that being sexually confident and assertive is not tied to politics. I’ve been a virgin far too long and the main reason for this was sexual shame, both religious and feminist. I think it is important to understand for feminists that there is a real reason much of feminism is considered misandric. Because it is. And it was much more than it is today – but social institutionalisation wears off slowly. We’re now living in a world in which the mainstream picture of feminism is the one painted by Andrea Dworkin. It will be another 20 years or so before feminism will be perceived in a different way.

So, the most important part here is: accept male desire, and accept men’s word when they talk about it.

It is not always easy, mind you. While I am, these days, very successful ‘with women’ (measuring successful initial interactions that lead to some form of follow up, from facebook to sex), I am still not especially assertive about my sexuality. I’m still afraid to attempt to kiss a girl, rather than talk to her until she can’t help herself and kisses me. Not all women do that. Most women do expect men to know when they want to be kissed and pushed against a wall but they never ever tell us.

Well, as mentioned I was an INvoluntary CELibate for far too long. Not quite the forty year old virgin but I was in my late 20s. This isn’t something I talked about, it was hugely embarassing on top of all my religious and feminist sexual shame issues. So, yes, there is pressure to conform, but that pressure is female. It pressure exerted by potential romantic interests who are afraid of what such a lack of sexual experience may indicate about me being a sociopath or something similar. Although I also have to say that not lying about my then-virginity was also the turning point in finally coming to grips with my issues.

“When is it to a man’s advantage to examine and question masculinity and stereotypes of male sexuality? Which men are motivated to do so?”

Well, I had this overwhelming desire and shame about my sexuality, about male sexuality being inherently violent. I was forced to deal with the non-mainstream prejudices and accept some of the mainstream elements to start to like my own desires (see the link above – I had wished my feminist mother had told me once that it’s ok to like breasts instead of constantly warning me about not to become aggressive and never push a girl). So, well, years of therapy later girls send me love letters from other continents a year after I met them but I’m still hardly able to make a move when she doesn’t kiss me first.

That’s how I started to get into gender debates, I was forced to. I guess that’s the same for most people.

What do normative men stand to gain by thinking outside the box about masculinity and sexuality?

Sorry I wasn’t able to respond earlier. I will make a point not to lump you in with other writers who have been bringing up the subject of men and feminism recently.

On the subject of Susie Bright and Dworkin, yes, she has written some positive things about Dworkin, and generally been a hell of a lot more magnanimous toward Dworkin than vice versa. Much of what she says in the obit is an amplification of things she said years earlier in a conversation with Erica Jong, though she makes quite clear her opposition to Dworkin’s pro-censorship agenda and comes to opposite conclusions about porn. (The Erica Jong conversation can be found in its entirety on one of the Amazon full text books here – use “Susie Bright” as search term.) I think many people make too much of Bright’s words about Dworkin, taking this to imply that they’re somehow in agreement and that the issues that drove the “sex wars” are somehow settled. Note also that she’s a hell of a lot less magnanimous toward Catherine MacKinnon, who she basically tears a new one in this essay.

Why I bring this a lot of this up is because you are something like the third feminist blogger to bring up the need for a conversation about masculinity. Audacia Ray did so several weeks ago and last month as did Sinclair Sexsmith on Carnal Nation. The thing is that many of you seem to be dredging up some really problematic versions of male pro-feminism. You bring up Jackson Katz and Thomas Millar as a good model. Shira Tarrant, who was involved with various “sex positive” and “masculinity” lectures with Audacia Ray and Sinclair Sexsmith, pretty much recycles Robert Jensen’s ideas on masculinity. In other words, pretty much NOMAS-school “pro-feminism”, that is, old-school radical feminism applied to the question of masculinity.

And I think there’s a real disconnect here. These are, after all, otherwise sex-positive writers who typically don’t have much good to say about what radical feminism has to say about sex work or BDSM. In fact, just a few months ago, Audacia Ray wrote a post that was very critical of NOMAS and its stance on sex work and pornography. Clearly Audacia Ray doesn’t like the counter-productive idiocy of these same people when it comes to her area of activism, that is, sex work, but seems less critical when it comes to borrowing their every-bit-as-problematic ideas on masculinity. And this seems to be a general problem with this recent so-called conversation around masculinity.

There are two possible interpretations of this. If I were more MRA-inclined, I’d take it as proof of feminist hypocrisy and double-standards. That is, you want “sex-positivity” for yourselves, but you ask men to embrace NOMAS’s self-loathing view of male sexuality. However I am going to assume good faith and taking a slightly more charitable view – basically, I think the sex-positive radical masculinity folks are being lazy. It seems to me (and I include you in this criticism vis-a-vis Jackson Katz) that y’all want an “off the shelf” version of male pro-feminism, hence, you’re trotting out the NOMAS men as an easy answer. And not really looking at these writers very closely or very critically, and don’t seem to realize that they’re offering men a vision of restrictive sexuality that you wouldn’t stand for if it was demanded of you.

And what I have to say is this – any “conversation” about masculinity that’s derived from NOMAS is a non-starter. Its like demanding that a conversation about BDSM must include the perspectives of Sheila Jeffreys or a conversation about gay male sexuality include Focus on the Family. Those of you feminists really are interested in conversation, they would do well to drop the old-school radical feminism. I think I speak for a lot of men when I say we tuned this *shit* out 30 years ago and dredging it up again isn’t exactly helpful.

“I think I speak for a lot of men when I say we tuned this *shit* out 30 years ago and dredging it up again isn’t exactly helpful.”

I am not too familiar with the organisational elements of what you mention (I have never heard of that NOMAS organisation, for example), but I agree that I found most of what I have heard of the people you mention not particularly helpful. These men, including Michael Kimmel, seem to be writing and talking about something I don’t really recognize, and they are doing it with an attitude that is, at least, disrespectful of male experiences, while claiming to be the only ones allowing male experiences.

Is this different from what Naomi Wolf has written in the nineties? That feminism has a lot of words for male violence, but hardly any vocabulary to celebrate male sexuality? And it’s at that point that feminists usually reply that it’s not feminisms job to talk nicely about male sexuality, but to point out where it is problematic.

Maybe that’s the case. Not sure. Which, on the other hand, begs the question of how this kind of thing can ever be productively be discussed within an explicitly feminist context. Not sure it can.

NOMAS – National Organization of Men Against Sexism, which was, I believe, founded by Andrea Dworkin’s partner John Stoltenberg, who more or less laid down the ideas on which the organization operates. Stoltenberg’s “Refusing to be a Man” is pretty much the central theory of that group and more recent works by Robert Jensen, for example, pretty much build on it. Their ideas on porn, sex work, and male sexuality is pretty retrograde. Robert Brannon, who heads their Porn and Prostitution Task Force, is a Christian evangelical, which doesn’t exactly lend to the most progressive understanding of the subject.

As vehemently as I’ve been arguing against many of the feminists who have been wanting to have a dialogue about masculinity, I actually do think a productive dialogue could be had if a lot of the baggage of really retrograde versions of radical feminism and male pro-feminism could be dropped. That and if men, including cis hetero men, are actually listened to rather than simply treated like idiots who need to be pushed toward an a priori “correct” feminist consciousness.

Whether the emerging “radical masculinity” feminists are amendable to this, I’m taking a wait and see attitude toward.

BTW, sorry you ended up stepping on a firehose of criticism on Feminist Critics. I do think that FC is making some valid points, but you’ve been so outnumbered in that conversation that I do think it hasn’t been productive. Looking at some of the recent posts on FC, I think the moderators recognize this too.

@iamcuriousblue: I think the sex-positive radical masculinity folks are being lazy. It seems to me (and I include you in this criticism vis-a-vis Jackson Katz) that y’all want an “off the shelf” version of male pro-feminism, hence, you’re trotting out the NOMAS men as an easy answer. And not really looking at these writers very closely or very critically, and don’t seem to realize that they’re offering men a vision of restrictive sexuality that you wouldn’t stand for if it was demanded of you.

I’m confused. In Part 2, I said this about Jackson Katz:

“Bullet-headed and aggressive in stance, he said a lot of valuable things — particularly about how men ought to take ownership of problems we traditionally consider ‘women’s issues’. It’s certainly true that if we want to end male abuse of women, men must participate in the movement. But although Katz discussed some issues of masculinity, I heard little about how we can make things better for men. His proposition of a men’s movement was centered around correcting the things some men are doing wrong. … [The] shift in awareness about gender issues faced by women has not been accompanied by a widespread understanding of gender issues faced by men. And that creates situations like an activist working towards a masculinity movement that talks mainly about how men are hurting women. … How can awareness of oppressive dynamics make it difficult for men to own their masculinity? Does male privilege ever make life harder for men? When does male privilege blind us to oppression of masculinity? There’s some mainstream awareness of gender issues faced by women; is there any similar awareness of the problems of masculinity?”

In other words, I supported one aspect of what he had to say (that men ought to take more ownership of male abuse) but I also pointed out that his approach disappears important potential pro-masculine stances. I don’t understand how I’m being lazy by doing that, or trotting out an “off-the-shelf” version of male feminism. And I’m frustrated by your comment because I feel like — in the same breath as telling me you wouldn’t pigeonhole me — you’re continuing to pigeonhole me.

“‘What does it look like to be masculine, but liberated from the strictures of stereotypical masculinity?’

I think Jackson Katz is a good example of that.”

I guess what I just don’t get is why there’s a need to salvage Jackson Katz. I’m also not clear from your writing so far what exactly you see as so important and essential about Katz’ message. Personally, I think there’s a lot of things wrong with his approach to questions of masculinity (starting with a few of the things you’ve mentioned) and with his politics, notably on the question of porn.

Regarding your ideas about his approach and persona – again, I think part of the problem is that you seem to see discussing gender questions with men as a question of packaging – say, Katz’s ‘drill sergeant’ approach as opposed Robert Jensen’s cloying “sensitive new age guy” persona. (I don’t like either, personally.) I’m more concerned with the message than the medium, and I see very real problems with the message of the established pro-feminist men’s movement.

What I think is useful about Katz’s message is that he’s targeting men to be involved in anti-abuse initiatives, and that he’s at least attempting to reframe “women’s issues” as “everyone’s issues”. And unless you want to argue that men don’t need to be involved in anti-abuse and/or gender-related movements at all, then yes, I think that’s a valuable message, and I also think that getting men to engage with it is probably at least partly a question of packaging. I am perfectly willing to critique what might be problematic about making man-on-woman abuse the central message of a pro-masculinity movement, but I am unwilling to say that pro-masculinity movements shouldn’t concern themselves with abuse at all.

“I am perfectly willing to critique what might be problematic about making man-on-woman abuse the central message of a pro-masculinity movemen”

I have a feeling it will be in one way or another, simply because that’s the way masculinity has been framed by mainstream feminism, particularly radical feminism in the last 30 years. Whether you believe it or not, this is the issue that will be front and center when you’re trying to redefine masculinity.

Well, you then go on to say this in the comments:
“‘What does it look like to be masculine, but liberated from the strictures of stereotypical masculinity?’
I think Jackson Katz is a good example of that.”

That was me answering Clarisse in the commends, as she’s pointed out.

I’d also like to make clear that I’ve not read any of Katz’ work — my entire experience with him and his viewpoints was from the one lecture I attended. And I definitely don’t agree with everything I heard him say that night (he seemed to have a pretty negative view of BDSM, for example). I do consider him to be a masculine man (in physical stature, body language, the timbre of his speech, etc.), and at the same time not exemplary of steroetypical masculinity (case in point: he holds lectures about man-on-woman violence). So I still stand by my answer, but my answer was not meant to say that I agree with everything Katz has to say.

But, basically, this indicates to me a view of masculinity itself as inherently hostile and dangerous. One that needs to be kept on a short leash, where men’s viewing of violent or pornographic media restricted, either through community pressure or state action, lest the dumb beast of a man get the wrong ideas.

Needless to say, the “men as naughty dogs” model of dealing with male violence is one that unreservedly condemn. Now if there’s a way of doing anti-violence work that avoids these pitfalls (and anything to be salvaged from Katz once this model has been rejected), I’m all ears.

Needless to say, the “men as naughty dogs” model of dealing with male violence is one that unreservedly condemn. Now if there’s a way of doing anti-violence work that avoids these pitfalls (and anything to be salvaged from Katz once this model has been rejected), I’m all ears.

I didn’t get that feeling from Katz’s lecture. The message I was hearing was more along the lines of, “There are some violent and abusive guys out there. It’s the duty of the rest of us to do something about it, and not just turn a blind eye to it.” He also pointed out that in some groups that he’s worked with (notably within sports and the military), male-on-female violence is actually seen as a thing to be celebrated.

I can’t disagree with that message, obviously. I guess I’m going on what I’ve seen of his writings and YouTube clips rather than any lecture I’ve seen. In his writings, more of his underlying ideology comes out, and I take issue with it.

In his work with the military, particularly the Marines, I have to wonder how much success he’s had.
the military, after all, is in the business of creating warriors, basically, training people to be extremely violent when the need arises, then hope that training stays contained. Add to this an often explicitly misogynistic culture that one is initiated into from basic training onward. I’m not sure if a few seminars from a tough-talking feminist dude would have much of an effect. Especially when so much of his message about being against violence and interpersonal dominance is 180 degrees from what military life is like.

Again just going with my limited experience from the single lecture, the psychology behind his tactics was interesting, and I think it could be effective even in those environments. It’s taking advantage of the typical male competitive nature in these sorts of cultures, and thus attacking the problem indirectly. So instead of saying, “It’s bad to beat/rape women,” he says, “Be the white knight. If you hear of this sort of thing going on, do something about it — tell an authority, talk to the person in question and make sure they know it’s not manly to beat a girl, whatever. Do something other than just ignore it.” Essentially, be the alpha male by exposing those lesser men who do things that give us all a bad name.

Then again, perhaps I was just listening to the parts that I wanted to hear, and projecting my own thoughts. :) Clarisse attended the lecture as well, and I think she got a different message from it. I myself am admittedly unschooled in most things related to gender studies and feminism.

unless you want to argue that men don’t need to be involved in anti-abuse and/or gender-related movements at all…

This clause is ambiguous.

There’s a (hypothetical) argument that there is no need for men to be involved in anti-abuse and/or gender-related movements at all, that these movements would be just fine with the participation of non-men only. I do not want to argue that.

There’s a quite different argument that there is no need for any particular man to be involved in anti-abuse and/or gender-related movements, that if Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to be involved in any of this, then that’s just fine; Joe’s duty ends at not perpetrating abuse himself. This is an argument that I do want to make. Sure, I’d greatly appreciate Sixpack’s involvement in my areas of concern, but it would seem to be the epitome of entitlement to impute any kind of obligation on him to do so. For a start, he may have issues of his own that are taking all his energies.

The ‘entitled’ view, contrary to the one above is a feminist one, which has been expressed in this very thread:

“It’s the duty of the rest of us to do something about it”

“…men ought to take ownership of problems we traditionally consider ‘women’s issues’.”

In so far as the latter is intended in particular to abuse by men of women, the latter notion is particularly offensive and prejudicial. My penis is not a title deed to the misbehavior of other penis owners.

@Sammael — Clarisse attended the lecture as well, and I think she got a different message from it.

Eh … I got the same message, for sure. And I’m going to go ahead and assert that I think it’s a good message. It’s just that I was also struck by the apparent message that the only or best reason to build a masculinity movement would be to focus on men’s abuse of women, and I don’t think that’s true.

@Daran — if Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to be involved in any of this, then that’s just fine; Joe’s duty ends at not perpetrating abuse himself …. My penis is not a title deed to the misbehavior of other penis owners.

I can see this response. Even I, for example, am not prepared to come down on every woman I see perpetuating negative stereotypes about men; I think I’ve basically fulfilled my “duty” as long as I don’t perpetuate them myself.

I do think, though, that at some point, backing up a negative culture becomes reprehensible. I’m not sure where that point is on the continuum between “actually watching someone attack someone else” and “failing to react negatively when someone makes a mild comment that could be construed to support abuse”, but I know it exists. Jackson Katz (from what I recall of his lecture which was, keep in mind, over a year ago) seems to think that the point where a man should take action is when he hears other men making comments that support rape culture. I think it would be really cool if more men would say “hey, that’s not cool” when they hear other men saying asshole rape-culture type things, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to say it’s incumbent upon them (especially since I’m not a man). I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the matter.

it’s a movie trailer for an independent film that’s apparently coming out, in which the film maker is “searching for his masculinity”, as per an annual 1% testosterone decline in the average US man. There was some discussion on feministing.com.

Even I, for example, am not prepared to come down on every woman I see perpetuating negative stereotypes about men;

I would be hard to retain peaceable relationships with other feminists if you did.

I think I’ve basically fulfilled my “duty” as long as I don’t perpetuate them myself.

I think “entitled” is a negative stereotype about men.

I do think, though, that at some point, backing up a negative culture becomes reprehensible. I’m not sure where that point is on the continuum between “actually watching someone attack someone else” and “failing to react negatively when someone makes a mild comment that could be construed to support abuse”, but I know it exists. Jackson Katz (from what I recall of his lecture which was, keep in mind, over a year ago) seems to think that the point where a man should take action is when he hears other men making comments that support rape culture. I think it would be really cool if more men would say “hey, that’s not cool” when they hear other men saying asshole rape-culture type things, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to say it’s incumbent upon them … I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the matter.

Setting aside issues with the term “rape culture” (including, but not limited to those discussed in this post), The main problem I have with the above is the idea that men have a particular responsibility to respond to sexism against women by other men. The parallel view, that women, have a responsiblity to challenge other women’s sexism against men, is rarely enounced. (Even the possibility of women’s sexism against men is frequently denied.)

You do propound the parallel view, (at least, you do so here), but that still leaves us with a kind of gender caste-system wherein I’m supposed to challenge men’s sexism and you’re supposed to challenge women’s, solely because of accidents of our chromosomes. Meanwhile male perpetrated misandry and female perpetrated misogyny fall through the cracks.

I hear more sexist remarks from my girlfriend than anyone else I know, probably not because she’s more sexist than anyone else, but because we’re closer. Although she makes the occasional misandrist remark, 90% of her sexism consists of judgmental remarks about other women’s dress or behaviour. And yes, I do challenge her.

…(especially since I’m not a man)…

Since I don’t believe morality should be gendered, it follows that I don’t believe that men speak with more authority about morality for men. The only subject upon with men qua men (respectively women qua women) speak with authority is the experience of being men.

The decline in male testosterone is a genuine scientific finding. I note, however, the that researchers could find “no extensive published studies of changes in the age-matched distribution of T over time”, so repeat studies are needed to verify that this is a real, generally applicable effect.

If it is, then, like any other physical change in human bodies, its causes, consequences, and possible remedies demand rigourous scientific examination. That site, however does not present a reasoned response.

@Daran — I would be hard to retain peaceable relationships with other feminists if you did.

Actually, the women I encounter perpetuating negative stereotypes of guys, and displaying expectations of men that I find abhorrent (“he always pays,” etc) usually are not women who identify as feminist — or even if they do, they’re hardly the most aggressive or theory-oriented feminists I know. In fact, I have just realized that the women I encounter perpetuating negative stereotypes about men are almost always the same women who will say, “Oh, but I’m not a feminist” and yet think abortion should be legal, women should get equal pay in the workplace, etc.

I think “entitled” is a negative stereotype about men.

That’s an interesting perspective that I had not considered. But, firstly, I already told you that the titles of my posts are intended to be takeoffs on a quotation I don’t agree with — and secondly, while I am willing to believe that the idea of male entitlement can sometimes act as a stereotype that sometimes causes trouble for men, I also think general society-wide male entitlement is a real problem and it’s worth drawing attention to it …. If you have any suggestions on how to do this without creating a negative stereotype, I’m interested in hearing them.

You do propound the parallel view, (at least, you do so here), but that still leaves us with a kind of gender caste-system wherein I’m supposed to challenge men’s sexism and you’re supposed to challenge women’s, solely because of accidents of our chromosomes.

In American society men and women can be friends (unlike southern African society, by the way, which is driving me a little insane in this regard), but there are still communal urges that are gender-based (“girl talk”, “guys’ night out”, whatever) and there are still a lot of people who distrust the opposite gender and will tend to give more weight to something said by a “peer” than something said by someone on the “other side”. I don’t like this, but it’s true, and given that it’s true, I don’t see why we shouldn’t exploit it.

Also, you are ignoring the idea that men generally have more power to influence other men’s opinions and behavior than women do, maybe not everywhere, but definitely in more misogynistic contexts such as, for instance, sports teams or the army. Maybe you are ignoring it because you disagree with it, but I agree with it, so I just thought I’d note it here.

You’re creating a false dichotomy. Your statement is only true if we assume that the only approaches being used to discourage misogyny and misandry are the very narrow tactics we are describing here — people of the same gender talking to other people of the same gender about their stereotypes about the other gender. I am a proponent of women calling out other women and men calling out other men, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we can also use other approaches. A lot of my most sexist assumptions and remarks have been called out by male friends.

The idea behind “recruiting” men is not that they have sole responsibility to work against these problems, just that they have some responsibility.

Also, I am now working on a followup to these three posts and will probably be working on it until later tonight (maybe until 12pm Central Standard time if not later). I have no intention of going through all the comments on your Feminist Critics posts about my posts, because quite frankly most of them are not worth my time, plus (as we have previously discussed) a lot of them are clearly calculated to piss me off. However, if you have any comments you think are particularly good, feel free to give me a direct link.

@Sam — Thanks, that’s a good one. I love that guy’s concluding paragraph:Also, I’m not sure I think this is a problem feminists are responsible for fixing. I don’t want to minimize it but it seems that feminism is only the proximate cause of the problem because there isn’t any positive script for male heterosexual sexuality. The fact that the old script is gone can be laid on feminism. But the old script sucked and I’m not sure any movement that challenges a norm or institution should be expected to have a replacement. As a feminist I think it would be a good strategy to have a replacement, in this case. But this isn’t something I would demand of other feminists. And if anyone hear cares about this issue a lot they should spend time coming up with ways to teach boys how to develop romantic relationships that both work and don’t involve misogyny. I’d help.

“Actually, the women I encounter perpetuating negative stereotypes of guys, and displaying expectations of men that I find abhorrent (“he always pays,” etc) usually are not women who identify as feminist…”

To be honest, it really depends on what you call feminism in this respec as most women, even if they don’t actively identify as feminist, are living a lot of feminisms ideas. Personally, I do find the theory driven people as problematic as the ones driven by simple conservatism – both ignores the individual human being. Luckily, in real life, there aren’t as many radical feminists as well as radical conservaties as on the internet.

“That’s an interesting perspective that I had not considered.”

Have you heard the term oppression olympics? It’s a not rarely employed tactic used to devalue experiences or accounts thereof based on the assumed lack of a rhethoric currency called “oppression” and an assumed surplus of “entitlement”. While I think that it can be valuable to assess one’s own perspectives in terms of relative privileges, using a predefinded ascriptice class characteristics cocktail to assign relative value to individual accounts is, in my opinion, deeply problematic. As epistemological devices, these concepts are useless – aware of those limitations, they can become useful for individuals and multutal understanding. This is a fundamental flaw within feminist theory that it owes to its Marxist origins.

“And if anyone hear cares about this issue a lot they should spend time coming up with ways to teach boys how to develop romantic relationships that both work and don’t involve misogyny. I’d help.”

To be honest, if one looks at the core of *some* parts of what is now known as the “seduction community” and abstracts from much of current “getting guys laid” e-marketing rhethoric, that’s what it set out to do – before it became utterly commercialised: Hooking into current notions of essential masculinity and effectively teaching a performative version of masculinity – something that can be learned must be performative, after all.

As for misogyny, misandry – I suppose there will always be disagreements about what constitutes misogyny, as there will be disagreements about what constitutes misandry (example: I think feminists are creating a misandrist discourse by only focusing on negative aspects of male sexuality, while most feminists say people who don’t talk about this are misandrist because they seem to think men are ‘animals’, which they say, clearly must be more insulting than “never” talking positively about male sexuality).

From my personal point of view I would consider it misandrist to be constantly told how your sexuality is a potential weapon and that expressing it is both an expression of generalized patriarchical violence and has the potential of individually hurting the woman you’re interested in.
This is what I perceived of the feminist discourse of my education as saying, while I was forced to realize that suppressing my sexuality isn’t what individual women want from me.

So, well, take that and the things I said in your post about the South African ad campaign, and you’ll get a pretty unusual perspective in this respect, particularly from someone who is now propositioned by women “to take them in a dark corner”. But despite my unusual experience I would say that there is a fundamental problem with expressing male sexuality: it’s internally bound by internationalisations of the old “chivalry” script, while experimenting with new ways of expression is often inhibited by the “male sexuality is dangerous” discourse.

Actually, the women I encounter perpetuating negative stereotypes of guys, and displaying expectations of men that I find abhorrent (“he always pays,” etc) usually are not women who identify as feminist — or even if they do, they’re hardly the most aggressive or theory-oriented feminists I know.

Emphasis added. Later in your comment, in respect of a negative stereotype I identified which is clearly feminist, you said that you “had not considered” it. So I’m inclined to take the above remark as more a statement of what you personally find abhorrent, and what you have considered, that it is about what stereotypes feminists do and don’t perpetuate.

…I already told you that the titles of my posts are intended to be takeoffs on a quotation I don’t agree with…

Yes, you already said that, and I take your word for it that this was what you intended. That doesn’t alter the fact that it did not (and still does not) parse as irony to me, to other men who have reacted, and I’d be very surprised if it parses as irony to other feminists who generally do agree with that quotation.

“Perpetuating stereotypes” is a effect that may not be concordant with the perpetuators intent.

…while I am willing to believe that the idea of male entitlement can sometimes act as a stereotype that sometimes causes trouble for men, I also think general society-wide male entitlement is a real problem and it’s worth drawing attention to it …. If you have any suggestions on how to do this without creating a negative stereotype, I’m interested in hearing them…

You might start by making the case there there is a problem of general society-wide male entitlement. In my experience, the “

entitlement discourse

” is a silencing strategy which operates to shut down disagreement by people who aren’t in fact, speaking from entitlement.

In American society men and women can be friends (unlike southern African society, by the way, which is driving me a little insane in this regard), but there are still communal urges that are gender-based (“girl talk”, “guys’ night out”, whatever)

That’s an assumption. I’ve never been on a “guys’ night out”, never heard of any of my male friends organising one, and can’t imagine that any of them would want to.

I’m not saying that men outside my circle of friends don’t do these things. “My village is the world” is a logical fallacy.

But in this case, your village is not the world either.

Also, you are ignoring the idea that men generally have more power to influence other men’s opinions and behavior than women do, maybe not everywhere, but definitely in more misogynistic contexts such as, for instance, sports teams or the army.

Are you saying that men generally have more power to influence other men’s opinions, or that they do so “in more misogynistic contexts”, i.e., not generally at all. You do not appear to be articulating a coherent view here.

Feminists typically make the argument from taint – “Men abuse women, therefore men can (and should) stop the abuse of women”, where the men the demand is being made of, aren’t the men doing the abusing. (Additionally men abuse men, women abuse men, and women abuse women, but these other dynamics are elided, and no taint attributed to women.) I realise the argument from personal influence which you’re making here is different,

Maybe you are ignoring it because you disagree with it, but I agree with it, so I just thought I’d note it here.

Well I agree that it’s true in particular contexts, but not so ubiquitously that I agree to it as a generality.

You’re creating a false dichotomy. Your statement is only true if we assume that the only approaches being used to discourage misogyny and misandry are the very narrow tactics we are describing here — people of the same gender talking to other people of the same gender about their stereotypes about the other gender. I am a proponent of women calling out other women and men calling out other men, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we can also use other approaches.

I thought we were discussing Jackson Katz’ views, as represented here by you, i.e., that “men ought to take ownership of problems we traditionally consider ‘women’s issues’”. I don’t know for certain how he reaches that position, but it looks to me more like the argument from taint.

I have no intention of going through all the comments on your Feminist Critics posts about my posts, because quite frankly most of them are not worth my time, plus (as we have previously discussed) a lot of them are clearly calculated to piss me off.

If that were true then they would also be calculated to sabotage my blog. But I really don’t believe that this is the intend behind any of our regular commentariat. Rather I think they are as oblivious to how much (and why) they piss you off as you were (and probably still are, to an extent) to how much you piss them off.

In fact, a really good way to piss people off is to attribute intentions, motivations, and other thoughts to them that they do not have. That’s one reason I try always to frame my criticisms in terms of what people say and do, rather than what they think or intend, unless they explicitly say what they think or intend. (The other reason is that it often strenghens the argument, and never weakens it.) I continually admonish my own commentariat to do likewise, with limited success.

However, if you have any comments you think are particularly good, feel free to give me a direct link.

It’s a bit late, but here are some answers. I figured it would only really make sense as a whole, although it is a bit long.

How men can be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine?

It’s easy on one level. Treat women as you treat men. However there are situations where it’s important not to play up masculinity, if a woman has reason to fear being attacked. It’s also important not to reinforce gender roles. Helping people is good, assuming helplessness is bad.

But if masculine sexuality is water and we’re fish, why doesn’t that motivate us to examine it more — not less?

If there’s one thing that annoys me about feminism (and there’s not, there’s way more, just you wait) it’s the idea that women understand men and masculinity because they live in a world where men are so visible. It’s like reading Cosmopolitan and thinking you understand women. It presents an limited ideal of what women want, one which suits an agenda. Masculinity also suits an agenda, and while it has positive aspects, it’s important to realise the glorification of masculinity is often part of that.

What does it mean to be a cis het man whose sexuality isn’t normative? Which straight cis guys don’t fit — and hence, feel alienated from — our current overarching sexual stereotypes?
When is it to a man’s advantage to examine and question masculinity and stereotypes of male sexuality? Which men are motivated to do so?

The main difference is that sexuality is vitally important to masculinity, while it has a tortured relationship to femininity. While varied expressions of sexuality can be difficult in masculinity the biggest problem is the pressure to have sex. Lots of sex, with lots of women. All the time. So the men that are most motivated are the ones that aren’t actually having sex. Where feminism has had to encourage women to express their sexuality, men don’t need so much encouragement. What they do need is to de-link sex with a sense of accomplishment. This typically leads to fairly unpleasurable sex, and also rape and harrassment, none of which are actually good for men.

When we discuss the limitations around sexuality from a non-normative perspective, how do we exclude normative people who might develop themselves in new directions if they had the chance? What do normative men stand to gain by thinking outside the box about masculinity and sexuality?

From above, the main change would be that it focuses on male pleasure, which isn’t as central as I think feminists make it out to be. What men stand to gain is better sex, better masturbation, less rape and assault, and better self-esteem.

How can awareness of oppressive dynamics make it difficult for men to own their masculinity? Does male privilege ever make life harder for men? When does male privilege blind us to oppression of masculinity? There’s some mainstream awareness of gender issues faced by women; is there any similar awareness of the problems of masculinity?

When is it to a man’s disadvantage to publicly examine and question masculinity? Surely the mere act of questioning and examining gender does not make a man less masculine; how can we work against the perception that it does?

Men acting feminine are often viewed in a more negative light than women acting masculine. It’s partly because femininity is seen as less than masculinity. But also, women have struggled to change perceptions of themselves in non-traditional roles and ways they present themselves. Men have only really begun this recently, and it is still fairly tentative.

How do the current “men’s rights movements” discourage men who might, in a different climate, be very interested in discussing masculinity? Assuming men can reclaim the “pro-masculinity movement” from MRAs, do any men feel motivated to do so? Can men occupy the middle ground between MRAs and LGBTQ, feminist, or other leftist discussions of gender — that is, can men find space to discuss masculinity without being aligned with “one side or the other”?

A positive thing about MRAs is, to borrow a phrase, the consciousness raising. I think we’re already seeing things like men’s health, shared parenting and stay-at-home fathering, work-life balance, and so on becoming fairly mainstream issues. Ultimately I think “pro-masculinity movement” will be incorporated into the mainstream western culture of egalitarianism and liberalism in the same way that feminism has been. That is, it will be fractured and disharmonious at times but held together by basic principles.

Where can we find ideas for how men can be both supportive and non-oppressive, and overtly masculine? How can we make it to normative men’s advantage to analyze masculine norms? What does it look like to be masculine, but liberated from the strictures of stereotypical masculinity? How can we contribute to a Men’s Movement that encompasses all three bases — being perceived as masculine, acknowledging male privilege, and deconstructing the problems of masculinity?

One of the problems with feminist criticism of men and masculinity has been to appropriate all the good aspects of traditional masculinity, leaving men with all the bad parts. So feminist women are presented by feminism as brave, decisive, ambitious and rational, while men are presented as violent, domineering and self-interested yet unreflective. This has been motivated by frustration with being discriminated against for not being brave, decisive, ambitious and rational, and abuse by violent, domineering, and self-interest, unreflective men.

Sometimes feminist men are presented in the positive aspects plus some traditionally feminine attributes such as caring and compassionate. But this is buried under a pile of oppressors, rapists, sexists, abusers, narcissists and so on. If you simply read feminist blogs or books you get an incredibly negative image of men.

Men need to identify with the positive attributes of masculinity without this being in relation to female inferiority. They also need to incorporate positive aspects of femininity without the idea that this is as lesser. This is probably the crux of the matter, it’s not difficult to get men to identify as brave, decisive, and so on. It’s difficult to get them identify as caring and empathetic, since this is still seen as weak by some men, especially younger men. This primarily originates from insecurity in their masculinity, and associating masculinity with the bad parts. I think the idea of masculinity being negated by a lack of counter-balancing feminine traits need to be presented, rather than that masculinity is negated by their presence.

Could feminist acknowledgment of the women’s gender-based advantages help pave the way for more men to acknowledge male privilege? Could feminist acknowledgment of the advantages on both sides of the gender binary help us better grasp what sucks about being a guy?

I think so. Another way to look at it is that traditional masculinity and feminity limit men’s and women’s choices, however the options that men are limited to are more powerful. That’s how male supremacy replicates itself. Plenty of men are frustrated by their restricted choices. Also, I think a problem of feminism that focuses on empowering women as a class is that it falls into the same trap as masculinity in limiting ‘feminist’ choices to those that are powerful. So the frustrations stay-at-home mothers or female sexual submissives have with feminism are much the same as a lot of men have with masculinity.

Can we do better at making feminist discourses around gender and sexuality open to normative men, without driving ourselves crazy? How can we make our movement open to, and accepting of, normative men? Put another way, how do we convince normative men to support us?

Feminists drive each other crazy already.

Another problem feminism has is that a lot its theorectical terminology comes from Marxism but its real world application is in liberalism and egalitarianism. Throwing around Marxist terms like class, entitlement and priviledge doesn’t help when you are talking to an egalitarian, regardless of gender. So I think erasing Marxist terminology is a good start, and focusing on equality and freedom of choice.

How do I do it?
As a summary:
1. Men should be approached from the position of egalitarianism and liberalism, rather than radicalism and Marxism.

2. Male sexuality should be approached from the concept of pleasure rather than accomplishment.

3. Masculinity should be framed as a positive gender identity based on traditional masculine attributes, provided that it tempered by some feminine attributes to prevent it being abusive.

@Daran — “Perpetuating stereotypes” is a effect that may not be concordant with the perpetuators intent.

Granted, and I’ll try to keep an eye on this in the future. I am willing to buy that it’s sometimes a silencing strategy and that entitlement discourse should not be allowed to evolve into that. The same way privilege discourse (a very similar thing) shouldn’t be allowed to evolve into a guilt-trip.

But in this case, your village is not the world either.

Okay, but you’re not actually contradicting my point.

Are you saying that men generally have more power to influence other men’s opinions, or that they do so “in more misogynistic contexts”, i.e., not generally at all. You do not appear to be articulating a coherent view here.

You’re right that this particular point was one in which I wasn’t clear (I meant the latter).

Feminists typically make the argument from taint – “Men abuse women, therefore men can (and should) stop the abuse of women”, where the men the demand is being made of, aren’t the men doing the abusing.

Have you read Yes Means Yes? I really recommend it — it’s an amazing book. There are some great essays in there on this very topic, which articulate your exact objections. I don’t know how much it will trigger you by sounding feminist or whatever, but I think you might agree with the heart of a lot of its points.

Rather I think they are as oblivious to how much (and why) they piss you off as you were (and probably still are, to an extent) to how much you piss them off.

Yeah, I made this point to my boyfriend on the phone the other day when I was trying to describe how simultaneously brilliant and infuriating FC is …. I am not trying to tell you what to do, but it strikes me that one way to make your No Hostility threads less hostile might be to have at least one moderator who identifies as feminist and is willing to clearly explain why s/he is moving hostile comments. This has the potential both to make your NoH threads less hostile, and to teach the commentariat what comes across as irritating. :shrug: Just a thought.

@machina — Wow, I love your comment! It’s great. Thank you. The only contribution I can think of right now is that I think most modern feminists (including myself) don’t have a strong consciousness of which terms come from Marxism. I read a little Marx in undergrad, but that’s it. So it could be really hard for us to get a grip on an influence we know very little about.

Clarisse, well I’m definitely an amateur myself but I do know there are Marxist feminists and that radical feminism is influenced by that to an extent. I guess that is where the odd mixture of utopianism and repression comes from.

In any case, I was trying to avoid telling you what not to do, since I think you’ve heard enough of that, so don’t worry too much.

[…] By Megan Rose I read/skimmed several blogs, articles, and comment threads today, including this one, this one, and this one. These are all basically on feminism and sexuality, and how that intersects […]

This is a great post– you so clearly articulated so many things I’ve tried to say on my own blog, or elsewhere, that I just couldn’t.

I’m rather perverted, but not enormously queer. I present as femme, and — although I’ve been known to tease my sensitive (frequently long-haired) lovers for being “unmasculine” — I fall in love with men. I’m hardly one to go for the “manly man” type, but at heart, I love knowing that I’m fucking a man.

This, for example, perfectly describes my own sexuality, and why I’m not willing to call myself “bisexual” even though I’m sometimes physically attracted to women.

And this:

Still, that doesn’t mean that straight, dominant, big-dicked dudes who love boning thin chicks feel totally okay about the current state of affairs. It just means they tend to have less immediate motivation to question it.

…can really be used to describe other forms of privilege, as well. Change the particular characteristics to “white, middle class Christian” or something else, and it still works perfectly to describe the phenomenon of people who aren’t willing or yet ready to acknowledge the impact their privilege has– or the fact that their privilege exists at all. I say this as a white feminist, so I can see both sides of the stages of acknowledging the privileges- being annoyed with someone’s obliviousness and defensiveness/dismissivness, and being oblivious and defensive or dismissive.

I say this as a white feminist, so I can see both sides of the stages of acknowledging the privileges- being annoyed with someone’s obliviousness and defensiveness/dismissivness, and being oblivious and defensive or dismissive.

Just stumbled across your blog, and I want to say that you are awesome.

I realize this is a really old post, but as a guy that’s not personally into BDSM it’s the one I feel a can actually contribute to.

So… to the topic at hand.

I must confess, I’m really angry at our culture’s notions of masculinity. Really, really angry. I’m really angry that I’ve been expected to conform to them. And I’m really angry that my life becomes harder when I don’t. But above all else, I’m really, really angry that regardless of the definition of masculinity that I am simply by virtue of being cis, het, male supposed to have some specific relationship to it.

And I think, for me, this really comes down to a deep disdain for people telling me who I ought to be. I am me. Period. And all words applied to me should only be descriptive, not prescriptive.

And so, to be honest, this whole “redefine masculinity” thing just seems completely irrelevant to me. Even if it is redefined to something closer to what I am, I Just. Don’t. Care. I just want to be me, and for people to be okay with that. The idea that we need to redefine masculinity in order for people to be okay with me is itself disturbing to me, because it should be irrelevant. I just want to be me.

I have just finished reading every comment on this page, and I just wanted to say how I was struck by the patience, humility and openness you displayed in all your responses. Although your use of the word “entitled” in the title made me wary that this might be another male-unfriendly feminist blog, I’m glad to see that my presumptions were wrong. You were respectful of opposing views, and you picked out the valid points in others’ sometimes-ranty posts and either addressed them intelligently or acknowledged them as weaknesses without spite.

While I don’t necessarily agree with your views 100%, I can’t help but be impressed with your conduct. Thank you for setting an example. And have a wonderful day! :)

I had inferred that you attribute men’s violence against women to all men, possibly from reading post #24, though upon rereading your posts I can’t find anything that actually implies this at all — all you seem to be doing is calling for increased male awareness and for men to take an anti-rape-culture stand when possible, which are certainly things I (and hopefully most people) agree with. So there’s actually nothing on this page you have said that I disagree with!

Since you do identify as a feminist, I suspect that despite agreeing with everything you have said on this page we may in the end disagree about a few things. I am a fierce individualist — I hold myself responsible for all and only the things I have personally taken some part in doing, to the extent that I was involved of my own free will. I want to stress that my philosophy *does* make a person who witnesses a crime morally responsible for trying to stop or at the very least report it, and there are many tenets of feminism that I do acknowledge/support, such as promoting equality *of opportunity* for women and the reality of male privilege. Where I come into conflict with (what I take to be) mainstream feminism is with the common assumption that male privilege is at all times the overriding factor in any situation involving the interaction of a man and a woman. I rather feel that male privilege is a factor among many, and in the West at least is frequently trumped by situational, or other institutional, forms of power held by a woman. I have one or two other gripes with feminism in general, but given that I’m only speculating that you even hold anything resembling these beliefs I’ll spare you them for now… :)

I’ve just read a couple of posts of yours on the front page and see you’re actually involved in the BDSM scene. That means you’re probably a lot less doctrinaire than I thought, and a lot more similar to me as well! This is great! I’ll definitely be reading more articles of yours.
So I’m sorry if the previous paragraph don’t pertain to you at all. I’ll leave it in though, just to give this post an intellectual sheen :-P If you have a post summarising your views on feminism please point me at it, I couldn’t find an “About Me”-type link on your blog homepage.

Thanks. Yeah, sorry about those assumptions that I generously… sorta left in :) I just felt that without sketching some kind of position my contribution to this thread so far would look like one big dollop of ass-kissery…

I’ve read the two articles you linked to and will read parts 2 & 3 and the followup soon. I haven’t yet found anything I disagree with. And I sympathise a lot with the crap you have gone through — the ridiculous closed-mindedness and negativity towards BDSM. If I ever fully “out” myself I know to expect similar disgusted reactions. For that reason I want to wait until I’m in a slightly more powerful position than I am now before telling certain key people.

There is one thing that I’d like to talk about for a moment, hopefully without triggering any unpleasant memories for you. It concerns the ass-grabber. I want to first of all clearly and emphatically say that he had no right to do that, that it was wrong and that in no way did your attire or your discussion of sex mitigate his actions.

In fact what I really want to talk about is all the guys who are not ass-grabbers. I would like to ask something of you. Depending on how many times you have had to put up with this sort of behaviour you may not want or be able to do this — in that case I understand.

When a woman dresses or acts in a provocative way, the “slobby hungry beast” part of a heterosexual man’s brain — the part that wants to go further than merely look at her — is engaged involuntarily. You are *entitled* to behave this way and suppressing those urges is the man’s *obligation*, and all mentally healthy men are capable of doing so. Nevertheless suppressing those urges is also something that requires effort; sometimes Herculean effort. You are imposing that effort on the men around you. As you are entitled to do. But you are imposing it.

What I want to ask of you is this: if you can, the next time that you knowingly dress in a provocative way, and go out into the world and have an enjoyable, ass-grabbing-free time, take a moment to appreciate the self-discipline that the men around you have shown. Yes, they are obligated to do that. No, they are not heroes. But they have made an effort on your behalf, one that most of them will make frequently throughout their lives, and I think that is worth remembering.

Sorry, but I’m having a really hard time buying it. By that token, every time someone triggers me by saying something gross and sexist, they ought to appreciate the effort I go through not to scream at them and/or punch them in the face.

Hey, I buy it completely. Whenever someone does something punch-worthy and doesn’t get punched, they probably ought to be grateful.

Acting civilized isn’t anyone’s default setting, I suspect. How ’bout this: When someone says something gross and sexist, and you don’t do any screaming or punching, don’t you feel like you’ve done them a favor?

(I’m not actually sure how normal people experience this. I know Typhonblue said something, a while ago, about wanting credit for not doing things she really wanted to do.)

Thanks Motley, you’ve hit the nail on the head. After posting, I realised that the same is true for visually-stimulated women who refrain from grabbing sexily-dressed men/women, or in fact any situation in which one person’s choices have a “blast radius” sex-effect that we rightfully expect other people to contain. What I realise now is that the principle actually generalises a lot further than I initially thought — to putting up with others’ free speech for example.

Clarisse, I totally think you deserve kudos for keeping your fists at your side in those situations!

Just speculating, but I think this feeling of not being acknowledged for the continual suppression of basic urges is where some men get frustrated and start down the wrongheaded path of thinking “She was dressed like a slut, so she wanted it, so she deserved to be harassed/fondled/raped”. To be as clear as possible: that’s not a valid excuse. But I think it would bring people closer together if this was acknowledged occasionally — there would be a sense that “the other side gets it”. Feminism asks for understanding from men (“Acknowledge your male privilege!”) and it would be nice if that went in both directions. (Not saying it doesn’t already, I’m just a feminism neophyte and still pretty ignorant, and I haven’t seen much “back-understanding” yet but it could well be out there — so please educate me!)

“Acting civilized isn’t anyone’s default setting” — well said! Motley if you have links to other places where this is discussed, I’d love to have them.

I think most people are acknowledging that clothes are used to communicate by most people.

“Acting civilized isn’t anyone’s default setting”

The problem is, of course, that no one knows what the default setting would be for humans, as it is logically impossible to remove socialisation. So it is kind of problematic to base an argument on something that cannot be identified.

I doubt anyone would doubt that provocatively dressed females are likely to have a sexually stimulating effect on a heterosexual males brain chemistry. But what follows from that isn’t all that obvious to me as it seems to be to you.

Yes, occasionally seeing a sexually attractive woman will lead to sexual fantasies including her. But there is a *huge* difference between fantasy and actually having the urge to jump her right then and there. Not jumping her doesn’t require effort because having such a fantasy doesn’t mean I would *actually* like to have sex with her just because she is there and looking good.

Motley if you have links to other places where this is discussed, I’d love to have them.

Just off the top of my head, I’d say (other than the other three threads in this series here at Clarisse’s place) that Daran’s place over at FCB is pretty good (the bloggers, at least; the commenters can get overly spiteful, particularly when you stray off of the NoH threads; I recommend not doing so). April’s place seems to be excellent too, though I haven’t looked at it much yet.

I think the sites are feministcritics.org/blog and ethecofem.com, but I’m not sure (clicking on Daran’s or April’s names where they posted above should get you there).

Alas, A Blog is also decent, though it’s probably worthwhile to click over to the Alas Debate Annex* to find conversations more complex than the standard feminist party line. Though the regular site can surprise you sometimes.

*It’s pretty new, though, so there’s not much there yet. It seems to’ve been created when one of the moderators for Alas decided to ban anyone who disagreed with a feminist talking point. (If I recall correctly, that same moderator has come out in opposition to the concept of discussion itself, too, which is a bit of a problem.) I’m not sure whether TADA will go the same direction yet.

The Yes Means Yes blog, linked to in the OP above, is sometimes useful, but if you’re bothered by enthusiastic bigotry (Thomas there makes some good points, but is explicitly uninterested in reigning in his loathing for men), you’re probably better off avoiding it. (Bigotry isn’t a word I use lightly.)

Feminism asks for understanding from men (“Acknowledge your male privilege!”) and it would be nice if that went in both directions.

Unfortunately, outside of Clarisse and maybe a few others, you’re going to be disappointed there. I believe Clarisse, in fact, gets accused of being an “MRA asshole” even for going as far as she has here. April had a pretty good post up (regarding the general dynamics of the online “gendersphere”) a while back titled “What’s Wrong With This Blog.” By “good” I mean “accurate” rather than “pleasing,” unfortunately.

So no, the “other side,” with a few notable exceptions, is not interested in “getting it.” (And usually the opposite; I believe feminist leader Jessica Valenti’s reaction was, literally, “boo frigging hoo.”)

@ Sam –

So it is kind of problematic to base an argument on something that cannot be identified.

Not quite. While it’s unlikely anyone knows what “default behavior” is, it’s easy to tell what it is not. And, man, treating one’s feelings as something monstrous that must be suppressed at all cost is not the default setting for the rest of us. :p
Even (no, especially) those of us who’s feelings actually are monstrous.

But being serious now, I don’t see a reason to assume that “default setting” means “biological baseline with no regards for socialization.” That’s not at all what I meant when I wrote the above, certainly.

But, really, are you attempting to deny the fact that civilized behavior isn’t the default state of humanity? If you’re going to make that extraordinary claim, I’m going to need to see some support for it.
(Hint: Police exist for a reason. If my statement was incorrect, they would not.)

I doubt anyone would doubt that provocatively dressed females are likely to have a sexually stimulating effect on a heterosexual males brain chemistry.

Someone (possibly you, I don’t remember) pointed out over in the Megathread that feminist canon includes denial of the fact that testosterone is a behavior-altering drug. So when you say “anyone,” you seem to be excluding most of mainstream feminism there.
To put it mildly, acknowledgment of the fact that the male and female brain is different is… not popular in most feminist circles. (On the internet, at least. It’s a fact of which all the feminists I know in real life are quite aware, but then they’re don’t have to operate in troll-defense mode.)

First of all, thanks Motley for the links and tips. Although the “back-understanding” picture you paint does look a bit bleak, I will continue to evaluate this for myself on a feminist-by-feminist basis. :)

Sam, regarding the difference you perceive between fantasies inspired by provocatively-dressed women and actual urges to enact them, I guess I don’t see a clear distinction the way you do. For me a sexual fantasy *is* something that I really, really want to do — that’s how I would *define* the term. The intensity varies, so I suppose I could distinguish them that way but it doesn’t feel like a real “difference” to me. Also I would say that quite often women dress this way because they actually do want sex — they just don’t want it with any old guy that comes along, they quite rightfully want to choose who, if anyone, it will be with. I think that implies that they (meaning those partiular women, not all women) realise that their behaviour does create those urges.

I’ve just finished reading the rest of Clarisse’s posts in this series and the followup, and of course there are lots of things I’d love to discuss about it, but here is the one thing that was most relevant to me:

Clarisse, episode 3 is where I see you most clearly acknowledging unfairness to men. It’s quite clear that you think that things are more unfair to women, and I agree with that, but the fact that you are acknowledging the former — and valiantly trying to persuade those on “your team” to do the same — is *hugely* important on an emotional level. Actually that’s all I’m after really: a bit of understanding, a nod of the head. Naturally I hope you’ll think about the point I raised earlier, but on a purely emotional level I’m satisfied that you are someone who *recognises* people like me. And given that you’re already trying to look for common ground to bring together very different groups (masculine men and radical feminists; BDSMers and the rest of the world) and facing a fair bit of flak on all sides for doing so, I’m inclined not to ask for more generosity of spirit from you at this point.

OK Clarisse, I can’t resist one more tidbit: the part where you said “But what’s especially pernicious about male privilege is that every aspect of female privilege can be trumped by male privilege. The classic example of this is that yes, I can gain “privilege” by dressing to look hot, but that “power” can instantly be taken away by a man who decides to call me a slut.” That really got me thinking, I haven’t seen that exact point made before and I think there’s a lot of truth in it. One thing I thought of is that, just like “Slut!” is a way that any man can take away a woman’s hotness-power, a woman can do serious damage to a man simply by describing him as “creepy”. It’s not exactly the same because it doesn’t work if directed at the genuine alpha male(s) of a group, but it works pretty damn well on any guy who isn’t, and for any reason. The only way for a guy to guarantee that he won’t be called “creepy” is to suppress entirely his sexuality, just like a woman can escape being called a slut by suppressing hers. Thoughts anyone? If this has been discussed elsewhere, I’d love to know about it.

“I believe Clarisse, in fact, gets accused of being an “MRA asshole” even for going as far as she has here.”

seriously??? Where did that happen?

“And, man, treating one’s feelings as something monstrous that must be suppressed at all cost is not the default setting for the rest of us.”

No, of course not – but I feel a little confused about all the consent discussion when your baseline assumption seems to be that “men are like that” but with effort, they may be able to control themselves.

I’d say that for most men there is a significant difference between imagining what physical intimacy with a woman wearing a short dress may be like, and *actually* having to control themselves to not actually assault her. How would that not confirm the problematic notions about male sexuality that we have worked out in the other thread?

Do you think guys in a strip club are acting “heroically” when they’re not jumping on the stage???

However provocatively or sexy she may be dressed, and even disregarding the possibility that she may be beautiful, but may also the most boring person on earth, even assuming actual sexual interest as opposed to mere imagination
– as long as she doesn’t want me, I don’t want her, effortlessly.

In my understanding, a guy saying “I’d hit that” doesn’t actually have to control himself from assaulting the woman, he’s hoping there will be an opportunity to say “hello” to find out if the interest is reciprocated.

Although the “back-understanding” picture you paint does look a bit bleak…

Yeah, it is. That said, though, something important to keep in mind is that your average feminist on the internet gets a constant assault of trolls, and so develops some extremely sensitive troll-filters, which are tripped by, generally, saying anything insufficiently negative about men.* A percentage of commenters who aren’t vociferously anti-male (yourself, for example) aren’t trolls, but they don’t know that. (And, quite understandably, don’t have the hours-and-hours it’d take to sift the non-trolls out of the trolls).
So one kinda has to accept that feminists who’re willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a non-feminist (semi-feminist?) on the internet are going to be very rare.

*Yes, I’m exaggerating here. A bit.

… I will continue to evaluate this for myself on a feminist-by-feminist basis. :)

That’s pretty much the way to go. Just understand that a lot of ’em aren’t going to be willing to assume good intentions on your part, and generally have their reasons for it. So, be careful.

Thoughts anyone?

For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with Clarisse’s original claim that the power a woman* can gain by dressing sexily can be taken away by a man saying “slut.” She’s still hot, and the effect that’ll have on the guys around her does not, I think, change. (It will, however, reduce the social power it’ll give her over other women, I gather. But that might be a separate issue.**)

*Some women, obviously, not all. Though probably most.

**Namely, (Warning: speculation) that a lot of women’s social power, with regard to other women, comes from how much sexual influence the other women think that a given woman has over men. Which doesn’t seem to have much connection to how much sexual influence the given woman actually has over men, because what-men-find-hot and what-women-think-men-find-hot aren’t the same thing. (Similarly, as Clarisse points out, reading Cosmo won’t actually tell you everything there is to know about women’s sex drives.)

@ Sam –

seriously??? Where did that happen?

Check out the OP on the Megathread. It was one of the quoted reactions over at Alas.

Do you think guys in a strip club are acting “heroically” when they’re not jumping on the stage???

Sam, remember that rule about not interpreting a statement in the most-obviously-false manner possible? Try it, it helps. Yes, when you deliberately interpret something in the most nonsensical way you can, it seems nonsensical. How shocking.
That’s on you, though, not on the person making the statement.

If you think you can deal with this, I’ll answer your questions. However, I’ll need you to at least pretend to be making a good-faith effort to understand what people are actually saying, okay?

(Yes, I know you’ll interpret the above as being, I dunno, a Scientologist proselytizing effort, as well as full-throated support for the model of the luminiferous ether, and then you’ll demand to know why I’m supporting a weirdo fake religion, or a concept that’s been disproved a century or so ago. When you do, I’m not going to bother explaining that I’m obviously not doing either of those things. Let me know when you’ve got the absurdity out of your system, and I’ll be happy to go back to having a conversation; you’re usually pretty awesome.)

no hard feelings. I’m a bit surprised about your reaction, though. It’s too bad I can’t link to a post I think I linked to in the megathread, because the server is apparently down for good, so I’ll have to try again on my own.

I’m surprised you’d say that my reading is a reductio ad absurdum of Tim’s point, maybe you could explain why you think that. Yes, he stated that men have no right to act on their urges to mate with a sexually attractive women upon setting their sight upon her, but he also stated that his desire to do so is real and that not acting upon it requires effort, sometimes heroical effort.

How is that not a rephrasing of “men are like that but can control themselves”? If not acting upon assumed real – assumed non cultural – urges requires actual effort, then this would be, in my opinion, congruent with common notions of sociopathical male sexuality which we identified as a major problem – which, I think, *you* identify as a major problem in the post I replied to.

So, well, maybe I’m misunderstanding this completely, if so, please help me understand what it is you and Tim are saying. But the way I see it (in my current understanding), effort needed to control oneself is incompatible with non-sociopathic understandings of male sexuality.

I disagree. Even according to Freud, who had a very sexually-driven view of human psychology, people’s default setting is to avoid pain* and seek pleasure. At first you might think that backs up the idea that somoene’s defult behavior would be to grab ass, but look deeper. If someone wants to get laid, then grabbing ass is not in their best interests — in fact, it acts to their detriment, making it less likely they will find the opportunity to get laid. And also increases the likelihood that they’ll get slapped. So, ass-grabbing both impedes the pursuit of pleasure, and increases the likelihood of pain.

I don’t think we need think better of any man for not grabbing a woman’s ass. Doing so sets up a pretty poor image of men; that we’re these poor, lust-driven animals that need recognition when we don’t act on our base desires. That’s worse than a dog, really — after all, we don’t take a moment to appreciate the self-discipline of a male dog that doesn’t hump our leg, even if we’re sitting with our leg out there ripe for the humping.

The classic example of this is that yes, I can gain “privilege” by dressing to look hot, but that “power” can instantly be taken away by a man who decides to call me a slut.

In this example, by “power” do you mean that woman’s power over that one man, or her power over men in general? I think if one man calls the girl a slut, that doesn’t reduce her power over other men. And if we’re just talking about that one man, then really her power over him is eliminated by the fact that he chooses not to “take the bait” as it were, not by him calling her slut.

Or are is the argument that being called a slut would emotionally disempower the woman such that her attractive appearance no longer has any power over other men?

@Tim:

[Being called “creepy” is] not exactly the same because it doesn’t work if directed at the genuine alpha male(s) of a group, but it works pretty damn well on any guy who isn’t, and for any reason.

On what premise would you say that alpha males are immune to this? And again I’m not sure whether we’re talking real power, or a sense of empowerment.

@Tim:

The only way for a guy to guarantee that he won’t be called “creepy” is to suppress entirely his sexuality, just like a woman can escape being called a slut by suppressing hers.

To further your point, in my experience even that’s no guarantee. Even if a guy is just sitting in the corner keeping to himself and suppressing his sexuality, that doesn’t guarantee that he won’t be called creepy. I’ve seen it happen. (Though if he’s keeping to himself it generally will prevent him from being called creepy to his face, at least.)

but he also stated that his desire to do so is real and that not acting upon it requires effort, sometimes heroical effort.

does not look like the most reasonable interpretation of a paragraph that wraps up with:

Yes, they are obligated to do that. No, they are not heroes. But they have made an effort on your behalf, one that most of them will make frequently throughout their lives, and I think that is worth remembering.

(Bolding mine)
It looks, in fact, a lot like interpreting it in a manner that is the exact opposite of the way in which it’s intended. Which is not cool. If I didn’t know how smart you are, I might buy the idea that such a wild misinterpretation was accidental.

But anyway.
It makes more sense when you interpret it the way Clarisse and I seem to’ve (though Clarisse seems to disagree with the overall point). People have urges. If you’re going to both trigger an urge AND expect people to suppress it, it’s not unreasonable to expect you to keep that in mind. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people (who know, or can assume, Clarisse’s leanings) to understand that when they say something gross and sexist and Clarisse doesn’t punch them in the face, to be conscious of the fact that Clarisse has just put forth effort on their behalf.

Similarly, if a woman gets offended when someone stares at her ass, and wears super-tight jeans, she should be aware that that gives a lot of people (except you, apparently :p ) the urge to look at her ass. It doesn’t reduce their obligation not to leer, but it does increase the effort required. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want somebody who’s imposing an obligation somebody else to be aware of what they’re doing.

If you’re going to jaywalk, it doesn’t make it acceptable for drivers to hit you with their car, but it does mean they have to swerve. It’s not unreasonable to expect a jaywalker to notice that people are swerving, and to know, before jaywalking, that you’re going to be requiring people to swerve aside.

The woman in the elevator with the noisy baby, this morning, didn’t get killed, and neither did her kid. If her baby had been quiet, this outcome would’ve required much less effort on my part. Her baby, by screaming in an enclosed space, made it much harder for me to fulfill my obligation. If her baby was an adult making a choice, we’d expect it to be aware of what it was doing, and the consequences it was imposing on others, wouldn’t we?

(I suspect this is why adults generally do not scream in elevators. (Though “scream back” was my second impulse, admittedly.))

Random tangent: It’s worth noting that the woman understood this principle, and was duly apologetic. Even though she didn’t know what sort of creature I am, she still knew that she (well, her kid) was making my life more difficult.

(And no, before anyone loses their mind, this doesn’t excuse rape, of course. It doesn’t remove any of the obligation involved, it just makes it less easy to fulfill. Nor, similarly, does it impose an obligation not to do whatever it is, make sexist remarks, wear a short skirt, or jaywalk.* It would, though, seem to impose an obligation to be aware of the effects of one’s own actions.)

*Actually, this does, apparently, obligate people not to jaywalk in the eyes of (at least) the people making the laws.

How is that not a rephrasing of “men are like that but can control themselves”?

Ah. As far as I’m aware, the important difference between reality and “men are like that but can control themselves” (i.e., sociopaths) is that the reality is “Men are like that, but can control themselves, and want to.” (The wanting-to may mean they aren’t actually “like that;” I don’t know if I’m really qualified to make that distinction).

Consider if we’re somewhere where it’s not acceptable to laugh, and I say something funny. It doesn’t make it acceptable to laugh, nor does it mean I can’t say something funny, but, if I ignore the fact that I’m making it harder to follow the social rules, then it does mean I’m being an asshole. Similarly, if I drink in front of a recovering alcoholic, and know-but-don’t-care that it’s making his life more difficult, I’m being an asshole.

The practical distinction here between average-person and sociopath is that, say, when Clarisse refrains from punching you for saying something gross, there’s a good chance she’s doing it for you, rather than just because she wants to avoid the consequences of punching you more than she wants the satisfaction of doing it. When someone’s doing something for your benefit, that you made them do, it seems somewhat dickish to choose to be unaware of that.

If someone wants to get laid, then grabbing ass is not in their best interests — in fact, it acts to their detriment, making it less likely they will find the opportunity to get laid. And also increases the likelihood that they’ll get slapped.

I could not disagree more.
Nothing whatsoever, in my experience, has done anything to imply that fully-rational cost-benefit calculations come naturally to humans. Or, in fact, that they ever happen. Your argument seems to rely on the idea that there is nothing irrational about humans, and that our every action is the result of a cost-benefit analysis.
Every bit of experience I’ve ever had with humans suggests very strongly that this is not the case.

Do you, for example, only do what’s in your best interests? (I’ll admit right up front here that if you say “Yes,” I probably won’t believe you. Sorry.)

On a different topic,

I think if one man calls the girl a slut, that doesn’t reduce her power over other men. And if we’re just talking about that one man, then really her power over him is eliminated by the fact that he chooses not to “take the bait” as it were, not by him calling her slut.

Yeah, but I’m not sure about the last part. I don’t think that a woman being called a slut reduces the (largely-but-not-entirely) visual power/effect she has over other men; but the guy doing the name-calling isn’t necessarily immune to it either. I’d almost argue the opposite. (When I see something like this, it usually looks like the guy’s making an inept attempt to challenge/dispute the power she has over him.)

On what premise would you say that alpha males are immune to this? And again I’m not sure whether we’re talking real power, or a sense of empowerment.

If it’s worth anything, I’d say alpha-females are similarly immune (though perhaps less; I get the impression that alpha-female status might be more tenuous than alpha-male status, but I don’t actually know). The higher someone’s social status, I’ve found, the less they care about an individual statement.

To further your point, in my experience even that’s no guarantee.

I agree completely. I believe that the “Nice Guys (TM)” are generally called creepy. Despite (or because of) the effort to completely suppress their sexuality (which seems to be their defining trait).

Nothing whatsoever, in my experience, has done anything to imply that fully-rational cost-benefit calculations come naturally to humans. Or, in fact, that they ever happen. Your argument seems to rely on the idea that there is nothing irrational about humans, and that our every action is the result of a cost-benefit analysis.
Every bit of experience I’ve ever had with humans suggests very strongly that this is not the case.

I could be misreading that, but it looks to me like you’re saying that humans never perform a fully rational cost-benefit analysis. I can personally say that when I am tipsy at a bar and interested in a woman, and the thought, “Man I’d really like to feel that ass,” comes to mind, my thought is how can I start a conversation and work that into hitting on her and then doing a bit of mutual groping? Has the urge to grope a woman come to me? Yes. I have never acted on it*, and I would actually take it as an insult if someone were to say, “Way to go man. I could tell you really wanted to grab that girl’s ass, but didn’t.” What, am I some Neaderthal that is expected to club a girl over the head?

Again to the original point, I direct you to the dog humping analogy. If you think that we should appreciate men’s self-discipline for not grabbing a woman’s ass, do you honestly take a moment out to appreciate a male dog’s training and discipline whenever it doesn’t hump your leg? If not, then why should we do so for men who don’t play grab-ass? (And as you said, if you say, “Yes,” I probably won’t believe you.)

I would argue that in the majority of circumstances in life, civility is people’s default setting. By default setting, I mean what they actually do, not what they want to do. Any argument based on what people want to do is speculative and unprovable, and thus is an irrelevant argument.

One can say, “I wanted to grab her ass, but didn’t, and I would like some gratitude for it.” I’d chuckle at anyone who said that, but it’s a valid statement. However, if you’re saying, “The majority of men want to play grab-ass with sexily-dressed women, without first talking to them and obtaining consent, and they have to use a lot** of self-control not to do so,” then I challenge you to show some proof thereof.

* Not without previous consent, of course. E.g. I do grope my girlfriend without warning, but that’s not the sort of thing we’re talking about here.

** And if we’re not talking about a lot of self-control, but rather just some modicum of civility, then why should we take a moment out to appreciate a small amount of self-control?

Do you, for example, only do what’s in your best interests? (I’ll admit right up front here that if you say “Yes,” I probably won’t believe you. Sorry.)

That’s a heavily loaded question, and also a vague one. Are you asking if the things that I do always end up with the best possible result for me? Are you asking if I ever do anything for the benefit of others (i.e. are all of my actions self-serving)? Are you asking if I always, 100% without fail, rationally take into account what will work out in my best interests?

Yeah, but I’m not sure about the last part. I don’t think that a woman being called a slut reduces the (largely-but-not-entirely) visual power/effect she has over other men; but the guy doing the name-calling isn’t necessarily immune to it either. I’d almost argue the opposite. (When I see something like this, it usually looks like the guy’s making an inept attempt to challenge/dispute the power she has over him.)

Though my own evidence is anecdotal, I can say that my experience matches yours. A man calling a girl “slut” because of the clothes she wears tends to have more of a negative impact on the guy saying it. With a higher-thinking crowd, it’s just crass and rude, and as you say comes across as a childish insult at best. But even with a stereotypical group of drunken frat boys, the general thought is, “Dude, wtf? Don’t tell girls they shouldn’t dress like sluts. We want them to dress that way!”

If it’s worth anything, I’d say alpha-females are similarly immune (though perhaps less; I get the impression that alpha-female status might be more tenuous than alpha-male status, but I don’t actually know). The higher someone’s social status, I’ve found, the less they care about an individual statement.

Well I’m still not sure whether we’re talking about real power, or emotional empowerment. Regardless, I would say that one need not be an alpha male to be unaffected by being called a creep (or something similar), and that likewise some alpha males might be as affected by it as your average Joe.

I could be misreading that, but it looks to me like you’re saying that humans never perform a fully rational cost-benefit analysis.

I’ll go a step further: Humans never perform a fully-rational anything. In a lot of ways, arguably, I’m much closer to an emotionless, fully-rational creature* than a normal person is. And I’m still nowhere, nowhere near close to actually being such a creature.

*Yeah, I know almost everyone thinks this about themselves. Weigh it against the admission in the last sentence above, though.

You say you disagree with the notion that civilized behavior isn’t the default state of humanity. I have to ask, then: Are you aware of police? War? Feminism? Laws? If civilized behavior was the default state for humanity, none of these things would exist.

No, by “default setting” I do not mean “The way they act in practice, under the influence of a great many external factors.” I cannot, in fact, readily think of a state less like a default setting.

Any argument based on what people want to do is speculative and unprovable, and thus is an irrelevant argument.

Erm… what on earth are you talking about? I’m getting the impression that you’re describing a universe in which people don’t want anything, and all of the groups that exist to enforce civilized behavior don’t exist.
That isn’t the universe I live in.

However, if you’re saying, “The majority of men want to play grab-ass with sexily-dressed women, without first talking to them and obtaining consent, and they have to use a lot** of self-control not to do so,” then I challenge you to show some proof thereof.

Look at the part where “want” appears in italics in my previous post. Your paraphrasing of my statement seems to be exactly the opposite of what I said. Seriously.

I’ll quote myself:

As far as I’m aware, the important difference between reality and “men are like that but can control themselves” (i.e., sociopaths) is that the reality is “Men are like that, but can control themselves, and want to.” (The wanting-to may mean they aren’t actually “like that;” I don’t know if I’m really qualified to make that distinction).

That “and want to” part is what makes the difference.

Are you asking if the things that I do always end up with the best possible result for me?

No, I was trying to gently point out that if your idea of how humans make decisions was accurate, McDonald’s would have gone out of business decades ago, because no one wants heart disease.

I would actually take it as an insult if someone were to say, “Way to go man. I could tell you really wanted to grab that girl’s ass, but didn’t.”

Don’t confuse “be aware” with “express gratitude in an absurd way.” They’re not the same thing, are they?

If you think that we should appreciate men’s self-discipline for not grabbing a woman’s ass, do you honestly take a moment out to appreciate a male dog’s training and discipline whenever it doesn’t hump your leg?

If I were to put extra effort into making my leg look particularly humpable,* such that I knew it’d trigger an I-wanna-hump-that response in most male dogs, then… yeah.

*No I have no idea how I’d do this.

Anyway, the point is:

And if we’re not talking about a lot of self-control, but rather just some modicum of civility, then why should we take a moment out to appreciate a small amount of self-control?

If you’re going to make civility harder, it’s a good idea to know that that’s what you’re doing. Nothing more.

But even with a stereotypical group of drunken frat boys, the general thought is, “Dude, wtf? Don’t tell girls they shouldn’t dress like sluts. We want them to dress that way!”

Heh. Pretty much. That sounds mostly right, but in my (still anecdotal) experience, it’s a bit more simplistic than that (“Shut up loser”). The guy yelling “Slut!” is, I think, mostly expressing bitterness at the fact that the woman has more social value than he does. His peers, I think, (including me, in the anecdote I’m thinking of) were more reacting to the accidental-honesty of it (“yeah, she’s worth more than you, so shut up, worthless jerk”) than to a more sophisticated consequence-evaluation (“oh shit, if women get harassed for dressing sexily, they might stop doing it!”).

Well I’m still not sure whether we’re talking about real power, or emotional empowerment. Regardless, I would say that one need not be an alpha male to be unaffected by being called a creep (or something similar), and that likewise some alpha males might be as affected by it as your average Joe.

Good call… I don’t really know which one we’re talking about either. I’m guessing that we’re talking external, social, “real” power, rather than internal emotional empowerment (if that makes sense?) but that’s just a guess.
A lot of it’s the same, though, I think.* I mean, telling a conventionally attractive, popular/alpha-female that she’s beautiful probably doesn’t change her opinion about anything, nor her social status; the same probably applies for calling her a slut. To the stereotypical nerdy-girl-in-high-school, though, doing either of those will probably have a significant effect on her emotions and, if done in public, on her status. I don’t really know exactly how different it is for guys, but the amount of influence that a single action has seems there to have an inverse relation to the person’s status as well.

*(Disclaimer: Speculation, again.) Emotional empowerment seems to be deeply, but not directly, connected, in normal people. I’m not really sure I understand the way this works, but normal people’s sense of emotional empowerment(self-esteem?) seems very much connected to where they think they are (or deserve to be) in the social hierarchy. But that’s probably a separate topic.

The tone here is starting to get combative, but I’ll do my best to respond to your points and monitor my own tone. If there have been any miscommunications/misunderstandings, I apologize.

I’ll go a step further: Humans never perform a fully-rational anything. In a lot of ways, arguably, I’m much closer to an emotionless, fully-rational creature* than a normal person is. And I’m still nowhere, nowhere near close to actually being such a creature.

Hmm, well we shall have to agree to disagree on this then. It seems that you’re going to extremes with the definition of “fully rational.” I sense that the use of the word “fully” here is a semantic argument (much in the sense that you cannot be fully sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that a chicken will not spontaneously appear on your desk). Of course you’re right if going to that extreme — it’s impossible for a human to make a “fully rational” decision. However, my original point had nothing to do with “fully” rational decisions by that definition. Rather, it was that many humans can and do, on a regular basis, make rational decisions, and I believe that for most of humanity it is their “default state” to do so.

I give you this: at a bar, when drinking, for many men rationality is not their default state, and it takes them more self-restraint than it would a normal man to not grab a hot girl’s ass. I still don’t believe that we should be pausing and taking a moment to appreciate the self-control they’ve shown, however.

You say you disagree with the notion that civilized behavior isn’t the default state of humanity. I have to ask, then: Are you aware of police? War? Feminism? Laws? If civilized behavior was the default state for humanity, none of these things would exist. No, by “default setting” I do not mean “The way they act in practice, under the influence of a great many external factors.” I cannot, in fact, readily think of a state less like a default setting.

I ask you in return: because some people do immoral/unethical/illegal things, does that unequivocably mean that the default state of humanity as a whole is to do immoral/unethical/illegal things? Again, I challenge: show some empirical evidence to back it up. Some study that has been repeated, or at least is repatable. Something more than, “Some people do bad things, and we have structures in place to provide negative consequences for bad behavior, therefore humanity as a whole has a default state of ‘not civilized.'” That does not logically follow.

Erm… what on earth are you talking about? I’m getting the impression that you’re describing a universe in which people don’t want anything, and all of the groups that exist to enforce civilized behavior don’t exist.

I get the impression that you’re saying, “Because there are police, war, etc., humanity is uncivil, QED.” Which, again, is not sound logic. To say, “…therefore some members of humanity are uncivil,” would be sound, but that doesn’t seem to be what you’re positing.

No, I was trying to gently point out that if your idea of how humans make decisions was accurate, McDonald’s would have gone out of business decades ago, because no one wants heart disease.

Many people choose not to eat unhealthy foods for exactly that reason. Therefore, many people do make rational decisions with consequences in mind, as opposed to your assertion that people are incapable of rational decisions. This shows that people are capable of rational decisions.

Look at the part where “want” appears in italics in my previous post. Your paraphrasing of my statement seems to be exactly the opposite of what I said. Seriously.

“Men are like that” is equivalent to “men have the urge to do that” which is equivalent to “men want to do that.” As in, that is the base desire of men. If you disagree, that’s fine, you’ll be arguing semantics, so feel free to save the typing since (again) semantical arguments get a discussion nowhere.

To take this back to the original point that started this thread, should we stop and take a moment to appreciate men for not grabbing women’s asses? I still assert that no, we (as a society) should not. We should not give a cookie to men who aren’t assholes, no more than we should give a cookie to people for not murdering someone who pisses them off. Moreover, I think that encouraging people to appreciate it when men don’t do illegal things is advancing the idea that men as a whole really are pigs who think with the wrong head without extreme effort, and that is insulting and detrimental to men (and also untrue, in my opinion).

To sum up: Base physical desires exist, this I can agree on. What level of self-control is required to overcome them, and should we be taking a moment to appreciate that level of self-discipline? I think “low” and “no,” respectively and respectfully.

Well I’m starting to see that I might not be able to afford the time to read and respond to all the points people are raising, which is unfortunate. But I noticed a few things since my last post that I could help by clarifying.

Motley, it was helpful of you to point out the high trollification levels feminist bloggers face. I’ll try to keep that in mind.

I caused some problems for Sam and Motley by saying both that sometimes “Herculean effort” was required by men not to ass-grab, and also that they are “not heroes” for not doing so. It’s easy to see these statements as contradicting each other, but let me try to explain. First, I myself have experienced the Herculean effort of holding myself back many times, especially when I was younger. Being a sub guy, my urges didn’t take the shape of literally grabbing ass (unless we allow that one may “grab” with one’s tongue :-P) but I think my extrapolation to a heteronormative man’s experience is reasonable. As for the “not heroes” part, I make a distinction between good behaviour that is our duty (i.e. what is expected of everyone), and good behaviour that goes beyond duty. A hero to me is someone who goes beyond their duty in their good behaviour, and I don’t think refraining from grabbing sexy women’s asses rises to that standard — *despite* the occasionally enormous effort required.

Sam, I think I *am* making the argument that “men are like that but can control themselves”, even if Motley isn’t. I don’t (yet) understand why that should imply male sociopathy, but if you can point to where that’s discussed I’d be interested to read it. FWIW, I think that the non-beast part of a man’s brain wants to behave nobly for its own sake (that is, I don’t think it’s merely the threat of punishment that keeps men on-track). Not sure if that’s relevant, but hey. Also, can I just say: I’m incredibly jealous that you are only attracted to those people who are attracted to you. My life would be drastically more manageable if the same was true of me.

Regarding the “power” of women dressed sexily: I took that quote from part 3 of Clarisse’s series. I take it she meant external power, not a sense of empowerment, and anyway that’s the meaning I intended when talking about both it and the power taken away from men by accusations of creepiness. Even more specifically, by “power” here I mean the extent to which a given person can influence another person’s behaviour, not necessarily in every situation, but instead averaged over all situations that person is likely to find themselves in.

Aside: my feeling is that a more-beautiful woman *is* nearly always more powerful than a less-beautiful woman (except possibly in situations where jealousy is a factor), and any woman’s power level can be influenced (up or down) by how she dresses. I posit a “slut threshold” which is (much) lower for unattractive women, and that a woman increases her power the more provocatively she dresses up to that threshold, above which her power level drops precipitously. Which of course is grossly unfair, but anyway. (Obviously this analysis is not meant to be prescriptive!)

I should have said “[Calling a guy creepy] doesn’t *necessarily* work if directed at the genuine alpha males of a group”. My intention was to shut down the plausible (but to me, uninteresting) counterargument that alpha males might be immune from harm, so that we could focus on the (interesting, and I would venture undeniable) fact that *many* guys are not immune. (My feeling is that many alpha males are immune, at least to some degree, but I’m not interested in debating this — I don’t mind if others disagree.)

And yes, it’s possible for a guy to be labelled a creep despite assiduously suppressing his sexuality. (Yeah, guess how I know that. :-/ ) But here is a counterargument that I find plausible: “Guys usually only get called ‘creepy’ if some of that sexuality ‘leaks out’ somehow.” Rather than fight over the details of what constitutes a “valid” leak — Is staring counted? What if it’s subconscious? What if he just gets really nervous and that makes conversation awkward? — I would rather make a less-general argument that is harder to fault, but which still contains enough substance to challenge* the other person’s stated position and thus enables the discussion about that topic to continue. Hence my advancement of the more guarded position that “Guys who don’t suppress their sexuality are eligible to be called creepy” rather than “All guys are eligible to be called creepy”.

* In this case, I’m not actually contradicting Clarisse (i.e. even if the statement “‘Creep!’ is just as damaging to men as ‘Slut!’ is to women!” is correct, it doesn’t disprove her assertion that every female privilege can be trumped by some male privilege) but I would argue that the symmetry of “Slut!” and “Creep!” shows that she chose a weak example.

On the flip side of this, I’m disinclined to dispute someone else’s broad contention if I can see a more specific case where it does in fact hold. That’s why I didn’t dispute Clarisse’s assertion that calling a woman a slut reduces her power, since even though I agree with the other posters that it’s frequently a face-saving effort my a spurned male that winds up backfiring and hurting only *his* level of power, I can certainly see instances where it does have the effect Clarisse described.

Motley:
“(When I see something like this, it usually looks like the guy’s making an inept attempt to challenge/dispute the power she has over him.)”
And considering how sexual dynamics are going these days there’s a chance that the man will end up looking like the idiot. If you look at a lot of tv and movies today you’ll notice that more and more often the guys that resort to calling girls/women sluts are usually clearly defined as jerks or bad guys. Whereas the use of creepy by girls/women is often used against guys are painted in much the same negative light. I’m not trying to say its come full circle but the power balance is not as one sided as it used to be.

sorry, I don’t have much time right now and I think I need to formulate this more clearly – so I’ll reply when I have the time. Still, briefly – Tim also said it required “herculean” efforts. So not “heroical”, ok, but still occasionally “herculean”. Potatoes, Potatoes?

I don’t think we disagree on actio->reactio, or that the categorical imperative is the baseline for interactions in elevators and elsewhere. So rationality isn’t what we’re disagreeing about.

We’re potentially disagreeing about the “animal” part and the question whether one man’s cerebrum or limbic system would be into having nonconsensual sex while his cerebellum is neeeded (effort) to keep the primitive stuff from actually acting out.

While I was brought up in the belief that my touch is toxic and I am like that, I have come to believe that, while rape may have occasionally been beneficial for the male from a procreation point of view and that the threat thereof may have been a part of what caused humans to form core social units, I believe that the brain chemistry of sexuality as well as the physical features of human sexuality (however unstable the female orgasm may be) are a testament to pleasure and consensuality.

This is not just culture, the need for acceptance, reciprocity and transcendence is built into most humans. We’re looking for more in sexuality than ejaculation, aren’t we?

Tim,

“Also, can I just say: I’m incredibly jealous that you are only attracted to those people who are attracted to you. My life would be drastically more manageable if the same was true of me.”

maybe we’re not using the same definition of “attracted”. I may well be attracted to someone whom I don’t know, or is not attracted to me. I’m attracted to, say, Marie-Louise Parker from Weeds, whom I’ve never met, and I’d probably still be attracted to her if she had made it clear that she’s not attracted to me. But that attraction doesn’t translate into a physical urge to force sex upon her that my cerebellum would need to control with effort.

Of course, that’s only how it feels to my conscious self, and may not be what actually happens in my brain.

Re: MRA asshole accusations — I believe the exact quotation from a commenter on one of my posts was, “You can’t just say you don’t want to be an MRA asshole and then cite all their erroneous, misogynistic talking-points.” You just can’t reach some people, I guess.

Sam wrote,I’d say that for most men there is a significant difference between imagining what physical intimacy with a woman wearing a short dress may be like, and *actually* having to control themselves to not actually assault her. How would that not confirm the problematic notions about male sexuality that we have worked out in the other thread?

Well said. I felt really frustrated by Tim’s original comment — maybe more frustrated than by anything else that’s been posted, actually — and I had trouble pinning down why; this sums it up pretty well. I mean, partly it just made me reflexively angry, because it triggered a lot of feminist anti-rape-apologist defenses. (It’s worth noting that when I tried talking about it with my boyfriend, it made him angrier than it made me.) But the worst part about it is that it seems to totally buy into this whole idea that male sexuality is automatic, irresistible, predatory — and so much of our discussion has focused around how damaging this stereotype is for men!

I mean, that’s where the “creep” thing comes from in the first place!

Motley wrote,I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people (who know, or can assume, Clarisse’s leanings) to understand that when they say something gross and sexist and Clarisse doesn’t punch them in the face, to be conscious of the fact that Clarisse has just put forth effort on their behalf.

Actually, my point was that Tim’s idea — when applied to my example — seems to boil down to something like: Even if someone isn’t aware of my leanings and triggers, they should be grateful that I don’t punch them in the face if they trigger me. Which is bullshit.

This whole idea that women “always know exactly what we’re doing” when we dress to look attractive is nonsense. I’m not saying that some women don’t “dress sexy” on purpose, but there are a lot of reasons women dress in “sexy ways”. For example, most of the time, being fashionable is sexy. If tight jeans are fashionable and I’m wearing tight jeans because they were the first thing I saw in the store, then I’m not “trying to tempt men”, I’m wearing what came to hand. And the idea that women are always trying to be seductresses when we happen to look hot is not just a misrepresentation of “all women’s” motives, it’s also almost always a really gross attempt to make us responsible for being assaulted. Maybe that’s not what it is in Tim’s example, but 99% of the time that’s what it is.

Women are particularly unlikely to realize that we’re dressed sexily when we’re younger/less experienced. I’m bolding that because it’s a really important point. Young girls are very often put in a position where the socially accepted thing to do is dress hot, and then people act like those girls did it specifically to tempt men. Some of those girls sometimes do it specifically to tempt men (I did). But sometimes they legitimately don’t realize what they’re doing (this is true of me too) and sometimes they dress hot with a vague sense of exciting dangerous boundary-pushing but no real grasp on how people will label/treat them for doing so (this has happened to me too).

Also, I’ve had men say gross things to me on the street even when I had consciously dressed to look as ugly as possible in an attempt to avoid street harassment (messy hair, sweatshirt, sweatpants). Which makes me think that the vast majority of the time, men who mess with me on the street are not actually doing it because I’m “so hot they just couldn’t control themselves”.

Sammael wrote,A man calling a girl “slut” because of the clothes she wears tends to have more of a negative impact on the guy saying it. With a higher-thinking crowd, it’s just crass and rude, and as you say comes across as a childish insult at best.

Well, most of the time people don’t outright say, “What a slut”. They put the words in a more roundabout way that’s essentially doing the same thing, but in a “civil” way.

I think Tim’s idea of a “slut threshold” is pretty accurate. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I do think that the brand/cut/cost of the clothes factor in too, though (eg, it’s harder to call a woman a slut if she’s wearing Valentino).

Anyway, to circle back to the “creep” thing, I totally agree that it’s an unfair accusation frequently lobbed at men for doing basically nothing. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this on any of these threads, but I’ve thought about it a lot.

Yeah, another biggie from me, sorry people… :) TL;DR: I think Clarisse confused me with someone who believes all women are calculating seductresses all the time; I’m not afraid to have my sexuality called “automatic” or “predatory” but I disagree with “irresistible”; maybe having and suppressing sexual urges does not entail sociopathy; sorry I lumped all men into one pile.

Clarisse,

I did say, “the next time that you [b]knowingly[/b] dress in a provocative way” (I hope “knowingly” appears bold there — I did add it just now, it wasn’t in the original). I’m specifically referring to those times that a woman deliberately dresses up, *intending* to create sexual attraction — possibly because she really does feel like having a one-night stand, or maybe just because she wants to attract some attention. So I suspect that you’re reacting to an argument that I’m not actually making. I certainly don’t think that women “always know exactly what [they’re] doing” or “always try to be seductresses”, and never advanced either of these arguments, so it’s somewhat frustrating to see you rail against them as though I had.

All that said: sometimes, women *are* conscious of the effect their choices will have, yes? Would you agree that some women, some of the time, deliberately dress sexy in full knowledge, or even in anticipation, of having precisely that drool-inducing effect on some man or other? It is from those women, in those situations, that I ask (ask — not expect, not demand) a modicum of respect for my efforts.

(I agree with you regarding young girls. They are placed in an unfair situation, having to choose between being uncool and being misinterpreted as seductresses before they even know what seduction means. Sexualisation of young girls would make an interesting topic for a post I think, but I hope you can see that their innocence is not something I’m disputing!)

“But the worst part about it is that it seems to totally buy into this whole idea that male sexuality is automatic, irresistible, predatory”

I can’t speak for all male sexuality (though I acknowledge that I may have unwittingly done so here at times*), I can only speak for mine. And *my* sexuality *is* highly “automatic”. It’s not irresistible, though resisting often requires effort. “Predatory” is a problematic word because it’s loaded with lots of negative connotations, and has no clear meaning that I can discern. As I’m submissive, my sexuality is probably not what most would call predatory, but if you define “predatory” to mean “unconcerned with the costs for others”, then certainly my *sexuality* (but *not* the totality of my personality, which regulates my sexuality) has some “predatory” aspects to it. If these facts about myself are damaging to men because they further a negative stereotype, then that’s unfortunate, but I can scarcely deny their reality.

As you can probably tell, I don’t regard those three words — automatic, irresistible, predatory — as being on an equal footing, or even necessarily all bad. Pending a clarification on “predatory”, the only word I object to is “irresistible”, which contains the abhorrent implication that it’s morally okay for a man to harass or initiate a nonconsensual sex act. As I hoped to have already made clear, I feel strongly that that is never morally acceptable, regardless of how a woman dresses or behaves. That is not the same as saying it requires no effort for me to resist (it frequently does), or that women are morally obligated not to create those urges in men (they are not so obligated, IMHO).

Also, I maintain that there is nothing shameful or unnatural in having urges that sometimes need to be resisted. I could well be oversimplifying, so please correct me, but I gather that some think that having such urges makes one, to some extent at least, sociopathic. Before I try to explain why I think this is false, I’d like to read what’s been said so far — someone mentioned a thread, can anyone tell me where? Thanks.

* I have inadvertently equated “men” with “men who sometimes require effort to suppress sexual urges induced by the sight of provocatively dressed women”. Please accept that this was unintentional. Sam, and others who would like to exclude themselves from the latter group, please do so by all means. I did not intend to speak for all men there, only myself. This is why I loathe talking about groups of people in general — it’s so easy to find yourself accidentally speaking “for” people. I speculate that there are many other men who are similar to me in this respect, but I certainly find it plausible that many (maybe even a majority?) are not.

Sam and Sammael, if a woman is attracted to me it usually increases my attraction to her too. Though of course being a sub guy (did I mention that yet? :-P) I find the “confident, aloof” thing a big turn-on so it can work the other way sometimes.

Sam,

“But that attraction doesn’t translate into a physical urge to force sex upon her that my cerebellum would need to control with effort.”

If you replace “force sex upon” with “have sex with”, and if I talk about just my own sexuality rather than trying to talk about all men’s, then we are simply people talking amicably about having different reactions to things, which isn’t too surprising. As I’ve said, I don’t think the fact that I sometimes have sexual urges that ought to be suppressed is pathological, and am interested to hear from others why this might be so. That difference aside, I just googled “Marie-Louise Parker” and we’re certainly in agreement there :)

I’m glad we agree on Marie-Louise Parker’s visual appeal ;). Interestingly, since you mention you’re a sub guy, you may prefer her character in West Wing to the one in Weeds – in West Wing she played a recurring part as chief lobbyist for a feminist organisation and the White House Deputy Chief of Staff falls for her because, as she states, “he likes to be hit over the head by women like her.” ;)

“If you replace “force sex upon” with “have sex with””

but the difference here would be her consent to sex, right? If “have sex with” doesn’t imply consensual sex, then how would the two phrases differ in meaning?

You say yourself that you cannot sufficiently clearly construe consent to having sex with you from whatever general message may be coded into the apparel of a woman the sight of whom creates sexual urges in you, right?

So, well, at *that* point of the “interaction”, I only see two logical alternatives.

One, when you say “have sex with” you’re implying consent when you’re initially vizualizing your phantasy and that implied consent is part of the sexual urge itself, in which case the sexual urge rests upon the implied understanding of consent and understanding that, in reality, consent cannot be construed at this point, there won’t be any *actual* sexual urge in need of rational control.

And two, the case where “having sex with” and “forcing sex upon” would be considered synonymous and that *actual* urge would have to be controlled rationally.

I still don’t think I entirely understand what kind of urge you’re speaking about.

As for “predatory” or “sociopathic” notions of male sexuality, I recommend you take a look at Clarisse’s Megathread (perhaps starting with my comment #70) –

One things I’ve been thinking about in this context but cannot really phrase clearly, I suppose, is this: Some women claim to have “rape phantasies” and being sexually aroused by them without ever wanting to be *actually* raped. So I wonder if there are also people who experience a phantasy of raping someone and are aroused by it without ever wanting to have actual non-consensual sex?

“One things I’ve been thinking about in this context but cannot really phrase clearly, I suppose, is this: Some women claim to have “rape phantasies” and being sexually aroused by them without ever wanting to be *actually* raped. So I wonder if there are also people who experience a phantasy of raping someone and are aroused by it without ever wanting to have actual non-consensual sex?”

Sam I’m willing to bet such people exist and I think there is line there. I think that in the end folks that have phantasies about raping someone and are aroused by it are still bound by actual consent. Yeah they may get a fake scenario going where they catch their “victim” off guard and “rape” them but in the end their “victim” is a consenting adult that agreed to take part in said scenario. Now of course I’m sure there are those that would take the fact that its agreed upon and ultimately consensual and declare it not to be rape.

So I wonder if there are also people who experience a phantasy of raping someone and are aroused by it without ever wanting to have actual non-consensual sex?

Resoundingly, yes. I separate rape fantasy from true rape by quite a distance. People on both sides of the coin (top/bottom) get off on performing consensual rape roleplay, who abhor the idea of real rape. The thought of true rape gets my blood boiling (in an angry, “I want to break whoever would do such a thing,” sort of way), but I do very much enjoy a good takedown scene.

A lot of S&M is about taking something that is otherwise dangerous and harmful, and framing it in a controlled environment where people don’t get truly harmed. The illusion of danger is what gets the adrenaline pumping, again on both sides of the coin.

A whole book could (and probably even has) been written on the psychology of rape fantasy.

I just read posts 70-151 in the “megathread”. It certainly is “mega”! Lots of interesting stuff there, I particularly enjoyed the conversation between you and typhonblue. You’re bang on with your analysis of the double blinds faced by both sexes. Still I haven’t yet come across anything talking about what specific aspects of masculinity are sociopathic or why. Sorry but I’m just a bit exhausted and don’t have time to go through the entire thread. If you can pinpoint a narrower range of highly relevant posts for me, or summarise things yourself, that would help a lot.

You’re right about my suggested rephrasing of “force sex upon” to “have sex with” — it glosses over the important issue of consent. Thinking about it a bit, it was stupid of me to make this suggestion as it actually runs counter to the argument I am trying to make. Although it’s true that many of my fantasies involve imagining a world in which the woman’s consent is assumed (i.e. I imagine that she would be a willing participant), there are also many times when that’s not the case — that is, I experience urges to do something sexual* with a woman that are without regard to the woman’s consent and as such *could* be acted out in the real world — and I want to explicitly include these in my defence (i.e. I want to say that having these urges, and suppressing them, is not pathological).

* Yes, even though I’m submissive. Wanting to bury my face in some gorgeous woman’s ass is a sexual urge!

In response to your questions about rape fantasies, I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that there exist people with these fantasies on both “sides”. For me, the ethics is clear: there is nothing morally wrong with *wanting* anything, ever (since only things over which we have some degree of control can be judged morally right or wrong), so there cannot be anything wrong with wanting to rape or be raped; it is wrong to harm a person without their consent, and rape is harmful; consent of all participants trumps harm as perceived by anyone else. Therefore it is morally fine to prenegotiate a (possibly highly realistic) *simulation* of a rape with someone you trust. Obviously, a person with fantasies of raping others needs to be *extremely* careful to avoid taking advantage of others, and I think the bar for establishing informed consent needs to be very high here. But I think it can be met. Regarding the possible objection that prenegotation would stifle all spontaneity, I saw a good column in Savage Love a while back suggesting that that can be managed with signals — e.g. “I’ll wear this clip in my hair if I want you to”.

“and I want to explicitly include these in my defence (i.e. I want to say that having these urges, and suppressing them, is not pathological).”

I cannot say what it pathological and what not – to do so would require full knowledge of male sexual psycchology. I would assume that rational control, to the extent that it works would be non-pathological, as it doesn’t actually cause harm, but it does paint a picture of male sexuality as potentially dangerous and taking rather than sharing.

I believe that this notion about male sexuality is harmful to men, but it is brought about, I think, largely by arguments like the one you’re making about the nature of your urges.

You say –

“Yes, even though I’m submissive. Wanting to bury my face in some gorgeous woman’s ass is a sexual urge!”

I don’t know. I may want to bury my face in her ass, but if she had to be held down against her will for me to get there, it wouldn’t do anything for me. The ass would be the same, but everything else would be different, and, apart from all rational, moral arguments, quite literally kill the mood (and any urge).

Again, I don’t know what neuronal processes are going on in my mind, what parts of my brain are involved in consciously turning off the switch in this case, and I assume it would be (theoretically) interesting to find out – but to my conscious self, it feels that way – and thus different from what it seems to feel like for you.

I don’t know. I may want to bury my face in her ass, but if she had to be held down against her will for me to get there, it wouldn’t do anything for me. The ass would be the same, but everything else would be different, and, apart from all rational, moral arguments, quite literally kill the mood (and any urge).

Yes, this. Of course I have sexual urges towards women all the time, but they are urges for sex that she is into as well. If she doesn’t want sex with me, that doesn’t make the urge go away, it just makes it impossible to fulfill.

To it can be frustrating, for sure. Sometimes very frustrating. But for me there is no “herculian” effort involved. It requires no effort at all. What I want is simply out of my reach.

I ask you in return: because some people do immoral/unethical/illegal things, does that unequivocably mean that the default state of humanity as a whole is to do immoral/unethical/illegal things?

Well, no, I won’t defend a claim that I never made. Sorry.

This began when I made the claim that the particular set of behaviors (peculiar to certain fairly progressive parts of 21st-century America, along with a few other places and times) that you and I think of as “civilized,” is not the default state of humanity. I’m sorry that I can’t offer any proof of this, other than all of human history, (as well as most locations on Earth, right now) in which behavioral norms differ from those of 21st-century progressive America. (Maybe I could offer proof, if I tried, but since you seem to be ignoring nearly everything in the world already, I rather suspect you’d ignore any proof I offered, too.) Similarly, I will not offer proof for the existence of gravity, while still maintaining that it does indeed exist. Because, if you’re not willing to acknowledge that it does, then I’m not entirely confident that you and I can have a productive conversation, if you know what I mean.

@ Clarisse –

Actually, my point was that Tim’s idea — when applied to my example — seems to boil down to something like: Even if someone isn’t aware of my leanings and triggers, they should be grateful that I don’t punch them in the face if they trigger me. Which is bullshit.

The idea I bolded, which does indeed change everything, does not appear anywhere in anything Tim or I have said anywhere on this thread. Reread it without adding that part. Does it make more sense now?
Yes, I agree completely that if you add something to a statement that makes it bullshit, yes, it becomes bullshit.
If I do the same with your next sentence,

This whole idea that women “always know exactly what we’re doing” when we dress to look attractive is nonsense, except that it’s completely true because women actually do understand everything about clothes, including the mind-control effects they have on everybody else.

Yes, adding nonsense to someone else’s idea makes it nonsense. But it doesn’t prove that the original, nonsense-free idea is nonsense.

@ Tim –

I think Clarisse confused me with someone who believes all women are calculating seductresses all the time

Good example of one of the side effects of the heavy trollification experience that the feminist blogosphere suffers. If you say something that can be interpreted in a way that suggests that you think rape is acceptable (even if a great deal of stretching is required to do so) then that’s the interpretation that’s going to be used. Almost invariably.
Not entirely certain there’s a solution to that, because the internet gendersphere’s not really a place where people give each other the benefit of the doubt (and often have good reasons for not doing so).

@ Sam and Tim –

Am I misreading, or are you guys seriously having an argument over whether or not the imaginary people in a sexual fantasy are giving their equally-imaginary consent to some imaginary sex act?

Sam, I’m now trying to imagine what you must say instead of “Man, I could do with a burger right now.”
I imagine it’s something like “Man, I could really do with going to a burger joint, having the burger joint be open, and having them have sufficient supplies of meat, buns, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and pickles to make me a burger. Also I could do with having the staff not all be out to lunch, and having the place not be insufficiently clean to eat at.”

In short: I don’t get the impression that people’s instantaneous sexual fantasies have anywhere near that much detail and thought put into ’em.

Sorry for the hiatus, my main internet source was taken out by a flood. Oh, Africa.

@Tim — Well, I think I just got triggered without reading carefully, then. If your point really is that it would be helpful for women to be aware of the effort they’re putting men through when they dress up, then it’s a weaker point than I thought. But what does it actually mean in terms of action? That a woman who dresses to look hot should apologize to every man who sees her that she doesn’t intend to sleep with? (I hope I don’t have to explain how gross this is)

Also, doesn’t it mean that such a woman would be assuming things about every man she meets? Like that he’s heterosexual, for instance? Or turned on by (for example) curvy women in tiny red dresses, as opposed to thin women, or women who dress conservatively?

It’s just that the whole idea seems to do two things:

(a) it means that women are still, still, being encouraged to center “all men’s” desires;
(b) it means that women are being encouraged to collapse all men into a particular stereotype of male sexuality that’s horribly limiting for many if not all men.

Also, is there any room for shades of grey in women’s motives here? If she kinda has an idea of what effect her clothes will have but doesn’t recognize the “full effect” …. I just don’t know.

I think your Burger example makes my point rather well: everything you say about the logistics of the availability of the burger is implied – if there’s no burger joint open at 5am then people wanting to eat a burger at 5am will be sad, but they won’t have to rationally resist an urge to get up and walk to the closed Burger store. They will just sulk silently about the lack of open burger stores at 5am.

Clarisse,

apart from the debate about the structural nature of “urge”, I think he was mostly interested in a recognition of how we affect each other, occasionally simply by being around. If a man has a nice ass and walks around in tight jeans, or if a woman is walking around in a revealing dress, then their mere presence is not unlikely to have an arousing effect on those people who are sexually attracted to the visual stimuli they are presenting.

The amount of which will clearly differ – when I was 19 I wasn’t able to go to a sauna for fear of getting an erection (in my country, people are all naked in saunas) while today that is perfectly fine and I can even chat up a naked woman in a steam bath without being overly distracted by her beautiful naked body. But I did think she was testing me knowing what she was doing when she leaned back and spread her legs… One of the weirdest compliments I ever got was from a guy at a bar who padded my back when I went to the loo after I had been speaking with a female friend who has (and presents) a lot of cleavage, saying – “dude, I really don’t know how you managed talking to her for 20 minutes without looking down…” He apparently wasn’t ;)

So the main point seems to be, to me, that we are always either actively emitting – often broadcasting – signals (trying to communicate to signal a specific message) or passively emitting (ie, the receiver is reading a perceived message into our being). We cannot *not* communicate/broadcast as doing so would *also* send a message. And as humans are sexual beings, *one* level of the active/passive communication is always sexual. And I think Tim has a point if he’s implying that in feminist discourse, this sender/receiver concept doesn’t get much recognition and is even often explicitly denied because there seems to be a belief that accepting this (logical) point would lead to more rape victim blaming or is seen as “objectifying”.

Well, I think I just got triggered without reading carefully, then. If your point really is that it would be helpful for women to be aware of the effort they’re putting men through when they dress up, then it’s a weaker point than I thought. But what does it actually mean in terms of action? That a woman who dresses to look hot should apologize to every man who sees her that she doesn’t intend to sleep with? (I hope I don’t have to explain how gross this is)

I hope I don’t have to explain that no, Tim still isn’t making the ridiculous claim. “Be aware of” and “apologize for” still aren’t the same thing. I don’t imagine that you’re unaware of this. What Tim (and I) said, could be interpreted, yes, in two different ways. One is the way in which it’s phrased, making a fairly weak and noncontroversial claim, the other, which requires a much looser reading of the text, is an excessively strong and totally absurd claim.

There’s two ways to interpret each statement, and one is completely absurd and ridiculous. Guess which one’s more likely to be accurate? I’ve found that conversations go more productively if one start’s from the assumption that one’s interlocutors aren’t insane and irrational.

Also, doesn’t it mean that such a woman would be assuming things about every man she meets

Yes and no, right? No, it’s not implying that a woman will be assuming things about every man she meets, but it is written in the context of reality, which includes the fact that everyone makes assumptions about everyone they meet.
The analogy would work better if there were a specific hat, worn by almost all feminists, and much fewer non-feminists, and which everyone knew was usually an indicator of feminism.

Also, is there any room for shades of grey in women’s motives here? If she kinda has an idea of what effect her clothes will have but doesn’t recognize the “full effect” …. I just don’t know.

That’s the point. I think relatively few women (and even fewer feminists, since this seems to contradict a key part of feminist doctrine) is aware of the “full effect.” But that being aware of the consequences of one’s own choices is an ethically admirable act.

In the meantime, this was interesting:

Oh, wow. It’s pretty interesting, and then the author has to wrap up with this:

The asymmetry of this project, however, is striking. The lust is men’s; the bodies are women’s. It’s an asymmetry built right into the survey design. Modesty is something pertains to only girls and immodesty is something that guys get to define. This may be even more pernicious than women’s constant self-monitoring. It erases women’s own desires and the sex appeal of men’s bodies, leading women to spend all of their time thinking about what men want.

So, asking a group of men whether they look for “modesty” in a potential spouse, and what that constitutes, “erases women’s own desires.” Wow. To paraphrase, “What about teh wimminz?” Similarly, when the waiter asks me what I want for dinner, he’s erasing what Sam wants for dinner, ’cause he’s asking me and not Sam. Also, when you ask what the weather’s like over here, you’re erasing an earthquake in South America.
The author seems to’ve concluded that asking a group of people about a topic erases all other groups of people and all other questions. Idiocy.

And that’s even without paying attention to the fact that the author is confusing a survey of one group of people of a particular sex and religion about what they are looking for regarding a specific type of relationship, with a statement about All People Everywhere.

With that out of the way, and onto the “man what” part: Wearing a purse-strap across the torso is “immodest?” WTF? Have I been missing something all these years?

In a continuing WTF theme, the author imagines that the survey is explaining “rules” for girls. So, by the author’s thinking, I will now perform a horrible injustice upon everyone reading this by saying the following:

I like steak.

According to lisa, I have just forced you all to either make me a steak or to hate yourselves. (Man, if this works and I get food just by writing this, I wish I’d found out about this sooner.)

@ Sam –

I think your Burger example makes my point rather well: everything you say about the logistics of the availability of the burger is implied

EXACTLY!

The amount of which will clearly differ…

Incidentally, Clarisse, it might be worthwhile to go check out Zoe Brain’s comment (#531) over on the Megathread. (I figure the fact that she’s not a man, but has some experience as one, and is a feminist, will give her more credibility when discussing men’s sex drives here.)

Far’s I can tell, the question of whether or not I, as I’m sitting at my desk fantasizing about eating a burger, am paying any conscious attention whatsoever to the imaginary logistics of how this imaginary burger came to be in my imaginary hands.
(Hint: I am not.)

First, “Police exist, therefore people as a whole want to commit crimes,” is both an absurd and illogical stance. If that sort of illogic is the basis of your stance, then I do not believe we have anything further to discuss.

Second, you are trying to separate “humanity” from civilization. Making an argument based on humanity minus cultural context is both absurd and pointless — we’re talking the drives/urges of real men, in our society. If you are saying, “Men in other times had these urges, therefore men now have these urges,” that is a pretty bold and baseless claim. It’s essentially saying that all of our base urges are nature-based, and cannot be affected by nurture.

Hence, back up your claim.

If you were to say that some men have the urge to play grab-ass with a sexily dressed woman regardless of her consent, I would agree with you. But unless I’m mistaken that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying that’s the default state for men in general (and that men that aren’t like that are the exception to that rule).

So once again, back up your claim. Unless I’m misinterpreting, in which case please clarify what it is that you are claiming.

And just to make sure we’re on the same page: regarding the question, “Should we stop and take a moment to appreciate men for not grabbing women’s asses?” is your answer, “Yes?”

Motley, hmm, hope the metaphor still works – I was saying that it doesn’t take rational effort to *not get up to walk to the burger place when it is closed” however much I would love a burger at that point. My urge is about a getting a burger from an open burger place not to break into a closed burger place and boil a burger myself.

If that sort of illogic is the basis of your stance, then I do not believe we have anything further to discuss.

Since you seem unwilling to even consider the possibility that I’m not making the most-absurd-possible-version of what I’m saying, I will agree that we don’t have anything to discuss. I’ll just wrap up briefly. (Well, I’ll try on the “briefly” part, but likely fail.)

Hence, back up your claim.

Again: No. I claimed that a particular set of behaviors (a set of behaviors unheard-of outside of a very particular set of circumstances) is not the Default State Of Humanity. This is a self-evident fact. You claimed that isn’t true. All of human history (and most human behavior in the present) illustrates that this type of behavior is not genetically programmed into humanity.
You can disagree with this if you like, but please do not expect me to take you seriously when you do so. Similarly, I understand that it might seem intellectually inconsistent of me to treat the existence of gravity as a fact, while being unwilling to prove the existence of gravity. That’s fine. I am similarly uninterested in conversing with people who find that inconsistency a deal-breaker. Gravity exists. 21st-century politically-correct acceptable behavior is not a universal, omnipresent natural condition of humanity. I am not interested in discussing the veracity of either of these these topics (more precisely, I am uninterested in having a discussion with the sort of people who do not already perceive and accept both of these facts).

I would attempt to address your other questions if I thought there was even the slightest chance you wouldn’t deliberately misinterpret them in the most absurd way possible. The evidence so far doesn’t support this conclusion, though, so I won’t.

I apologize if you’re actually a usually-reasonable person. When, say, Clarisse or Sam, f’rex, trip the crazy-filter, I give them the benefit of the doubt that I don’t give people in my first interaction with ’em. I know that’s unfair, but it’s also unavoidable. Sorry.

@ Sam –

I was saying that it doesn’t take rational effort to *not get up to walk to the burger place when it is closed” however much I would love a burger at that point.

Hmm. I’m not sure, now, whether I’m misreading the metaphor, or whether your urges are highly non-standard (I know that mine are, but I’m mostly operating off of the impressions I’ve gathered from other people). I was mostly just making a crack about the level of detail in the average sexual fantasy (assuming there even is an “average” one). I get the impression that most fantasies don’t address the topic of “how the sex came about” at all, any more than my urge to have a burger (soon, lunchtime, soon!) involves any thought whatsoever about the origins of the burger and how it came to me.

My urge is about a getting a burger from an open burger place not to break into a closed burger place and boil a burger myself.

No good, I think. I suspect most sexual urges aren’t about getting on a plane to Vegas, or finding an “escort service” and scheduling an appointment. I think it works better if I’m eating a burger in front of you. You might look at it and thing “Mmm, that burger looks tasty.” You’re not necessarily fantasizing about me voluntarily sharing my burger any more than you’re fantasizing about stealing it; urges just generally don’t have that level of detail.

(Damn, can you tell I’m practically starving right now? My wife and I are going out for burgers for lunch, but that meant waiting a bit later than I usually have lunch… so this past hour has been freakin’ agony. Hence the profusion of food analogies.)

Since you seem unwilling to even consider the possibility that I’m not making the most-absurd-possible-version of what I’m saying, I will agree that we don’t have anything to discuss.

To paraphrase myself, I am simply saying, “It seems to me that you are either saying this, or this. Either way makes no sense, so please clarify.” Or at least, that is what I am attempting to convey.

I keep asking, but you keep evading: are you speaking of men as they would be if not raised in modern-day culture? It seems to me that you are, and I have been discussing on that basis since all indicators point that way and you have not said otherwise.

Hence it seems that while everyone else is talking about the urges of men in our current culture, you are talking about those of men when culture/upbringing is taken out of the picture, and those are not at all the same thing. For proof, please see any Psychology 101 text re: nature vs. nurture. If you disagree, I can provide more specific examples, but please be prepared to provide proof to back you up as well, with more substance than…

This is a self-evident fact.

It is not self-evident, for the reasons I have provided, yet you continue to assert that it is self-evident. So yes, if you insist that this is self-evident and a fact, when I have given reasons that it is not, then either we are still not talking about the same thing (people as they are, with cultural influences and upbringing included), or we have nothing further to discuss. If I were to ask you to prove that gravity exists, you could very easily do so. This, you cannot, and I assert that is because it is not fact, but simply poor logic that is making it self-evident to you.

“Default State of Humanity” cannot be divorced from culture and still be meaningful in this conversation, period. Culture affects how we are — what our urges and desires are. If a man raised in the woods by wolves has the urge to play grab-ass with a hot girl regardless of her consent, that in no way whatsoever proves that men in today’s culture have that same urge.

No good, I think. I suspect most sexual urges aren’t about getting on a plane to Vegas, or finding an “escort service” and scheduling an appointment. I think it works better if I’m eating a burger in front of you. You might look at it and thing “Mmm, that burger looks tasty.” You’re not necessarily fantasizing about me voluntarily sharing my burger any more than you’re fantasizing about stealing it; urges just generally don’t have that level of detail.

I realize you’re responding to Sam, but I’d like to jump in.

Of course, my urges are not that detailed. And I like your second burger analogy: you having a burger, and me really wanting it. It seems more similar.

But for me, unless I’m close friends with you and that sort of shit flies, the idea of stealing the burger from you isn’t a valid way of fulfilling that urge to eat the burger. And for me, at least, it doesn’t require any conscious effort at all to avoid doing so. It’s just a frustrating situation to be in. Which may indicate subconscious effort, admittedly. But it’s not like I’m in danger of losing control of myself and stealing your burger unless I keep tabs on myself and exert effort. Which I think is perhaps what Sam is getting at.

Incidentally, Clarisse, it might be worthwhile to go check out Zoe Brain’s comment (#531) over on the Megathread.

Yeah, I’ve read a couple of accounts from trans people. I was very much in the “testosterone is not significantly mind altering” crowd before reading those accounts. But after reading them, it seems pretty clear that women (in an overlapping bell curves sense) just don’t grasp sexual urge as men experience it.

I actually recently had a conversation with a female friend, where I was explaining that cuddling in private had become a sexual trigger for me and turned me on (I think I need to watch out for Pavlov). And she said something like, “Oh yeah, me too, it’s nice.” And I tried to explain that it was not pleasant for me, but unpleasant and frustrating unless it actually led to sex. She couldn’t relate.

At the same time, I think there’s a lot more complexity to it than just that. I get the impression that women can get sexually frustrated, but perhaps it just takes a lot more. And there have been plenty of times when I’ve been turned on, but didn’t want to have sex. I’m not sure what all the factors are.

And for me, at least, it doesn’t require any conscious effort at all to avoid doing so. It’s just a frustrating situation to be in. Which may indicate subconscious effort, admittedly. But it’s not like I’m in danger of losing control of myself and stealing your burger unless I keep tabs on myself and exert effort. Which I think is perhaps what Sam is getting at.

Yes, this (emphasis mine); well put. And I believe this to be the norm.

But for me, unless I’m close friends with you and that sort of shit flies, the idea of stealing the burger from you isn’t a valid way of fulfilling that urge to eat the burger. And for me, at least, it doesn’t require any conscious effort at all to avoid doing so.

Man, a couple hours ago I’d have read this and thought “what the hell is this guy thinking?!?! FOOOOD!”
Couple hours and three burgers later, the world makes more sense. (That particular biological quirk has a lot of benefits, but one nasty drawback in the form of “always hungry and sometimes insanely hungry”) Anyway, something like the Pavlovian effect in humans is still really interesting (to me, at least). I think this has a lot to do with the conscious/unconscious divide; you, as a normal person*, presumably internalize social norms (albeit with varying ease and depth) fairly readily; you can be conditioned to put forth the effort to restrain an urge without making a conscious effort (just as most people presumably don’t scratch their genitals in public; this doesn’t mean their genitals don’t itch, though). I suspect that people with that particular mechanism (the one that lets them perceive and follow social norms without conscious effort) never really notice all the effort they’re exerting, because it happens at a subconscious level. (I’m fairly certain it’s still happening–hell, I can often see it happen–but it doesn’t seem to get conscious attention from the person doing it.)

*For these purposes, in this particular respect, etc. This “you” might be a kinda generic “people” more than “you, specifically.”

I was very much in the “testosterone is not significantly mind altering” crowd before reading those accounts.

I was pretty skeptical of the claim (I’m fairly skeptical of any claim about the experience of a group, when the person originating the claim is not part of that group and has not even done any research.* This goes double when the person making the claim is part of a group that explicitly does not value the experience of the group about which they’re making the claim.)

It didn’t help that I’m a member of the group in question, but I’d largely been discounting my own experience, for pretty good reasons. But yeah, the experience of transpeople (and, in general, any experiment that involves injecting women with testosterone) belies the claim. I was still impressed that Zoe Brain actually said it, though.

*Yes, including the one I made a couple paragraphs ago. But I’ve done extensive research on that one, which I believe can be readily duplicated.

I actually recently had a conversation with a female friend, where I was explaining that cuddling in private had become a sexual trigger for me and turned me on (I think I need to watch out for Pavlov). And she said something like, “Oh yeah, me too, it’s nice.” And I tried to explain that it was not pleasant for me, but unpleasant and frustrating unless it actually led to sex. She couldn’t relate.

I may have actually gotten this link from the megathread, but I don’t recall. In any case, it seems relevant. It’s an account from a trans man, and among other things it discusses the effects testosterone had on him:

I’m currently reading a book about the cultural history of sexuality in early Christianity and some of the statements seriously reminded me thereof.

I think there is one particularly interesting aspect with respect to the discussion at hand – “teamwork” –

“These Christian guys, however, did claim responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. When asked about their role in avoiding lust, many were adamant that it was their own responsibility. Many felt that innocent, shameless, platonic interaction between men and women was a team effort:”

I think, this teamwork aspect is a desire of the recognition of the non-pathological nature of male desire despite in the way Tim has explained above. “Men are like that” has been, in my opinion, the narrative that was used to control the assumed latent sociopathy of male sexuality – often not just by having checks on men, but also by controlling access to female sexuality, eg, Burqua. Feminism has taken issue with this “teamwork” aspect requiring women to collaborate in controlling male sexuality – as it is rightly seen as limmiting female expression – yet feminism has *not* attempted to change perceptions of assumed latent male sociopathy. They merely attempted to shift the responsibility for “men are like that” from biology to “rape culture”, hence “while men are like that” they could be different, and hence it is their own responsibility, and only their responsibility, to deal with the sociopathical effects of their sexuality. If the male sex drive actually *were* different biolocally, and latently pathological, then it would be more difficult to consciously withdraw from joint management thereof, as it would be a part of the common human existence. The notion of temptation, that is clearly present in those Christian accounts, has been removed from feminist discourse.

While I believe, as explained above, that I think there is very good reason to believe that consensuality *and pleasure* are biologically/evolutionarily built into human sexuality, I also believe that there are some fundamental differences in the nature of male and female sexuality – yet it still seems very difficult to identidy which of the experienced differences are pre-cultural and which are not.

But be that as it may, a general acceptance of male desire is, sadly, lacking in any discourse – except for “men are like that” or “rape culture”.

I think what Tim is – essentially – asking for is something like the acceptance of male desire explained in this *WONDERFUL POST* – taken from archive.org because the server currently throws a 500 error –

I already linked to it in the megathread, but one cannot link to it too often. Two longer quotes, but do read it in the entirety, if possible –

“And for many men (like my friend) who believe in the humanity and autonomy of women; who believe in a woman’s right to be regarded as a whole person who is more than just the sum of her tits, ass and pussy; who believe that a woman’s cultural and societal worth encompasses more than her value as a sexual object; who do not believe that women innately “owe” men sex by virtue of our existence; but yet who also find much of their thoughts, desires and behaviour at least partially driven by their innate sexual attraction to women — attempting to uphold feminist ideals of not objectifying women may often seem like an impossible task.

Part of my discussion with my friend on this topic took place via e-mail, which affords me the opportunity of quoting him directly.

>>Genetically, Darwinistically, biologically, I am forced to be obsessed with women’s bodies. Yes, forced. I can control how I act on that obsession, and the obsession doesn’t include the urge to hurt women physically. But there is absolutely no changing the feelings. Not after millennia of evolution. And in this place and time, the people whose respect I crave the most are always telling me that my very inner core is dirty, shameful, evil, wrong, disrespectful, backward, brute, and unevolved. But I can’t change it. So I’m stuck in perma-shame. That conundrum has always made me envy gay men. But I crave women. I desire their bodies. I want to fuck them. They’re so gorgeous and wonderful and perfect that I want to make love to almost every one I see. But I don’t try to fulfill that, and I don’t even admit those feelings to most people, and that’s how I get by. But I still feel like I’m acting through all of life. I have to pretend that the evidence of my respect for women lies in the supposed fact that I don’t want to fuck most of them.<<

…

Well, let’s assume for the moment that my friend is right, that his experience is universal and that men are innately and biologically forced to be obsessed with womens’ bodies and to desire almost every woman they meet sexually, motivated purely by the animalistic and instinctual aspects of sexuality that are completely beyond their conscious control. Even if this were true (which I am not entirely convinced it is), where it gets problematic for me is when we start to conflate socially constructed demonstrations of sexual desire with the innate sexual desire itself, which then causes us to assume that the method by which the desire is demonstrated is in itself a biological inevitability, and therefore exempt from criticism.

Let me illustrate this with an example. ManY is introduced to WomanX for the first time. He feels an instinctual sexual desire for her beyond his control. Brief images of him having hot, sweaty, carnal sex with her flash through his mind and he is powerless to stop them. WomanX is blissfully unaware that her new male acquaintance is screwing her silly in the privacy of his own mind … until she notices ManY’s gaze focused intently and unabashedly at her breasts. Suddenly, WomanX knows she is being evaluated as an outlet for ManY’s sexual desire. Perhaps, as is so often the case, this makes her feel uncomfortable. Perhaps she doesn’t understand why it is that this man must stare at her breasts within moments of meeting her, why his first action upon making her acquaintance is to evaluate her sexually. Perhaps she turns away or crosses her arms over her chest. Perhaps ManY breaks his gaze, embarassed, realizing he was caught staring. Perhaps ManY simply shrugs his shoulders and raises his eyebrows and smiles in that all too familiar “I can’t help it! I’m a man! I like tits! You have tits! I have no choice but to stare at your tits!” sheepish grin that virtually every woman has seen at some point in her life.

I can concede that ManY simply cannot help his desire to have sex with WomanX, and can’t control his mental images of having sex with her. Even if he didn’t want to desire her sexually, even if he didn’t want to picture having sex with her in his mind moments after meeting her, he’s going to whether he likes it or not. I can accept that possibility. However, while this innate biological drive extends to his *desire* to have sex with her, this drive does not force him to stare at her breasts. It is not a biological inevitability that he must stand there and stare at her breasts. Whether or not he gapes at her breasts is entirely within his control and his conscious choice. It is a socially constructed (and in our culture, socially accepted) demonstration of his sexual desire. Women are told “men can’t help but stare, that’s the price you pay for being hot.” Women and men are taught to believe that the staring, the visual claim of ownership, the obvious objectification, is as much a biological inevitability as the desire itself. And it’s not. Now, I’m not talking about a furtive passing glance that occurs unconsciously, before a man even realizes it. I’m talking about that gaping leer, that fixed stare, those eyes moving up and down your entire body as they evaluate you and then the final nod or smile that tells you “you’ve passed the test. I’d fuck you. You’ve fulfilled your objective.”

[Quote from the post:] “A female-to-male transperson says that in his previous life as a woman, he didn’t feel controlled by his sex drive, but that now he has much more trouble resisting it. He outright remarks that when he was female-bodied, he felt suspicious of male assertions that their sex drives were overpowering … but now that he’s male-bodied, he totally agrees. I can’t remember the exact quotation, but he even said something along the lines of “Women think we can control ourselves, but we can’t”.”

This caught my eye, not so much because I wanted to give a rant about it being sexist, but because I feel the same way…but I’m a biological woman. However, I know I wasn’t like this until very recently, when I began to have more sex. I too used to think men were lyign when they said they couldn’t control themselves, but now I too often feel that the desire has grown too big for me to control as easily as I did two or three years ago. Maybe it’s not tied to much to which gender you’re born with, but how much you use it?

So I still consider the debate not settled. My own sex drive has gotten a lot more overpowering and “hard to control” since I started having sex that actually, you know, met my needs. I believe that our cultural definitions of sex are centered around a certain type of stereotypical male sexuality, and so of course men who are able to exercise that kind of sexuality find that they think about sex a lot and have a hard time resisting it. I theorize that if culture were based around a different type of sexuality (eg, stereotypical women’s) then that would be the group that had trouble controlling its urges, and what we currently consider to be stereotypical men would be the group that’s often too confused or doesn’t know what it wants or just simply can’t access those urges enough to make them hard to cope with.

@Motley — I’m not trying to put instructions in Tim’s mouth. My point was just that I don’t know where to go with his idea. Let’s assume that I ought to be considerate of the effort that men are going to not to assault me when I’m wearing sexy clothes. Now what? Am I supposed to reflect that consideration in my actions somehow?

If all he’s saying is (this is from Sam):

So the main point seems to be, to me, that we are always either actively emitting – often broadcasting – signals (trying to communicate to signal a specific message) or passively emitting (ie, the receiver is reading a perceived message into our being). We cannot *not* communicate/broadcast as doing so would *also* send a message. And as humans are sexual beings, *one* level of the active/passive communication is always sexual. And I think Tim has a point if he’s implying that in feminist discourse, this sender/receiver concept doesn’t get much recognition and is even often explicitly denied because there seems to be a belief that accepting this (logical) point would lead to more rape victim blaming or is seen as “objectifying”.

… then, okay, fine. But my previous caveats still stand, and I’m still confused about where the action item is.

Also, here’s something I don’t get, Motley, but it’s more a personal question than philosophical. You seemed really frustrated in the Megathread when I talked about how I work hard to be sensitive to the potential triggers of my trans activist friend. You seem more open to the idea that I should work hard to be sensitive to potential triggers of men who are attracted to me. Am I misunderstanding you, or do you see a difference between the situations?

So, asking a group of men whether they look for “modesty” in a potential spouse, and what that constitutes, “erases women’s own desires.” Wow. To paraphrase, “What about teh wimminz?” Similarly, when the waiter asks me what I want for dinner, he’s erasing what Sam wants for dinner, ’cause he’s asking me and not Sam. Also, when you ask what the weather’s like over here, you’re erasing an earthquake in South America.

Heh. But seriously, did you miss the part where the dudes interviewed in that piece started instructing women that they ought to dress in a more modest way?

Also, I think it’s pretty undeniable that when certain ideas are posed as “truths of acceptable behavior” by the class of people you’re attracted to, then those ideas are easily perceived as pressure. Maybe unreasonably so, but they’re still pressure-ful. I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how expectations of how men can be attractive from the mainstream create toxic pressures for men. Expectations of how women can be attractive do the same things to women.

As a general rule, though, I do agree with you that individual tastes ought to be taken into account more when talking about whether a given type of desire/media/whatever is “pressuring”. For example, lots of radical feminists claim that S&M porn creates terribly toxic pressures on young women to act masochistic. While I understand where they’re coming from, I think they’re missing the part about how S&Mers don’t expect most people to be like us. When we create/watch kink porn, we’re doing it for people like us, not people like them.

@Sammael — Motley can be frustratingly snarky, but he often has good things to say. I think even he will understand if you give up on him, though ;)

So I still consider the debate not settled. My own sex drive has gotten a lot more overpowering and “hard to control” since I started having sex that actually, you know, met my needs.

That makes a lot of sense. It’s also important to account for the way women are socialized, and what they are taught about their own sexuality.

But I still think it’s woefully erroneous to dismiss accounts from FTM trans men who despite being socialized that way are still clearly affected by T. Unless you decide to take T yourself, or unless I decide to take an inhibitor, I think it’s important to take their word that they are, indeed, affected by T in notable ways.

But I agree that things are more complex than just that, as I noted before. Even amongst men, there is clearly a range of ways that sex drive is experienced. And the same is true for women. And I’m sure there is a fair amount of overlap. But I still don’t think hormonal factors can be dismissed. The same person, either with or without T, does seem to experience their sex drive differently when other factors are controlled for.

I too used to think men were lyign when they said they couldn’t control themselves, but now I too often feel that the desire has grown too big for me to control as easily as I did two or three years ago.

Bolding mine. Just a note: insofar as it involves having sex with other people, I’m pretty sure they are lying. I have a pretty strong sex drive, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of control (see previous comments). (It does mean I masturbate frequently, though.)

Also, I think it’s pretty undeniable that when certain ideas are posed as “truths of acceptable behavior” by the class of people you’re attracted to, then those ideas are easily perceived as pressure. Maybe unreasonably so, but they’re still pressure-ful. I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how expectations of how men can be attractive from the mainstream create toxic pressures for men. Expectations of how women can be attractive do the same things to women.

@Clarisse:
Another thing that just occured to me, also in response to the first thing I quoted above:

My sexual needs have rarely been met, at least in a truly satisfying way for me. I think the number of times I’ve had genuinely satisfying sex probably comes in somewhere under 20. Most of the sex I’ve had has left me wanting.

But my sex drive is still very high and “uncontrollable”, and I still feel a need to seek out sex even if it isn’t terribly satisfying. So perhaps even that dependency on whether or not you’re getting fulfilling sex is part of the difference that comes with T? Just a thought.

I think it could be useful to separate sexual desires into two types: reproductive and sensual. Reproductive desire is probably innate and prescriptive as the process that leads to the fertilisation of eggs by sperm is very specific. Sensual desire is probably learned and diverse as there is a large variety of ways to experience sexual pleasure. There can obviously be an innate difference between males and females (as reproductive sexes) as their roles in sexual reproduction are different. There can also obviously be learned differences between males and females because of physiological differences and because of gender roles. However the two aren’t delineated, indeed sexual sensuality seem to exist separate from other forms of sensuality because its connection to pleasure stimulation derived from reproductive behaviour.

“If your point really is that it would be helpful for women to be aware of the effort they’re putting men through when they dress up, then it’s a weaker point than I thought.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. Although I’m impacted just as hard, or sometimes harder, by women who haven’t gone to any trouble to dress up but happen to be naturally very sexy, I accept that as “part of life”, just as Sammael (and I) accept that unrequited crushes are a part of life. It’s only to the extent that the woman *intends* to create attraction (in someone else, or in all guys generally) with her dress/behaviour that I feel she is “taking” something from me — something I ultimately believe she has a right to take, but which she is taking nevertheless.

“But what does it actually mean in terms of action?”

Usually, nothing. Certainly apologising is way over the top, in fact any verbal or other acknowledgement *at the time* strikes me as ridiculous and possibly insulting to those around you. All I’m really looking for is some private mental consideration of what you are doing to guys like me by behaving this way. About the only desirable “outward manifestation” of that that I can imagine (again I stress this is not a moral obligation, just something feminist women *could* do to build a bridge) would be if, say, women with blogs concerning sexuality and gender issues might acknowledge it in print once in a while. :)

“Also, doesn’t it mean that such a woman would be assuming things about every man she meets?”

No, it doesn’t. But unless you know better, it is safe to assume that in a typical environment containing many men, quite a few of them are probably heterosexual men who have tastes approximating the cultural norm — which includes being turned on more by women dressed more provocatively. Assumptions are not bad things in themselves, they’re only bad when applied unreasonably or when better information is readily available.

Regarding “shades of gray”: Yes, there are shades of gray. Above, I had originally written “It’s only when the woman *intends* to create attraction with her dress/behaviour”, but changed “when” to “to the extent that” to reflect this.

Motley’s hamburger analogy works well for me: my urge is simple and takes no account of contingencies. In all likelihood, were I to actually act on my face-burying urge, I would be very unsatisfied because the woman’s reaction would not be as it is in my fantasies. (Obviously I have never done this, so I’m speculating about what my own reaction would be like.) But the point is that, for me at least, **even the fact that I rationally know the outcome would not be what I want, I experience the urge to do it anyway.** That is the nature of an urge.

The view you both share, as I see it, is that because you rationally know the outcome of acting on an urge will not be satisfying, you could not have expended effort in suppressing that urge in the first place — correct? I’m afraid I see that as a logical sleight-of-hand. Tell me: Is it possible to experience an urge to do something that you rationally know to be counterproductive? If you disagree, then we have very different ideas about what an “urge” is. (And I guess you never ate a whole block of chocolate as a kid and then felt sick :) ) If you agree: Can some counterproductive urges require effort to suppress? If you again agree, then you have not necessarily contradicted (my interpretation of) your view — it could still be true that you never expend effort in resisting sexual urges — but its truth does not follow from your reasoning.

But perhaps this word “effort” is just not all that important. You both (well Cessen at least, and I think you too Sam?) acknowledge the frustration caused by having our eyeballs frequently assaulted by images of sexy women, and that puts us in much the same boat I think: we all agree that some women make some choices that increase our frustration levels. I think that the difference between my saying, “A woman dressed provocatively causes urges that I must exert effort to control” and your saying, “A woman dressed provocatively causes increased frustration” is not much, except insofar as the former paints a picture of a more animalistic, dangerous man, a man who might possibly break down or give in to those urges. That distinction may be important to you, but it’s not to me, and here’s why:

I’m not going to break down or give in. Although I do contain those animalistic elements, they are just one part of me, and I have other circuitry that regulates them. In particular I have a sense of right and wrong, and I’m proud of the fact that I will force this to override more base urges in determining my actions.

I’ve come to many of the same conclusions as Raven Kaldera (great link BTW Cessen). (1) Desires are not right or wrong, only actions can be; (2) Desires never justify actions. It is OK for me to want to do something nonconsensual with a woman, but it does not justify doing it. **Men worrying that their desires are morally wrong/animalistic/sociopathic/”rapist”-like is a trap that stems from confused thinking.**

Although it might be comforting to women to think that men do not in fact have these urges, my experience tells me that at least one man does. While I accept that this may genuinely not be your (Sam’s or Cessen’s) own experience, I think the solution is not to pretend that no men have these urges or to demonise those who do, but rather to acknowledge that some do, that this is not in itself bad, but that those men are capable of suppressing these urges and ought to do so when they are unwelcome.

Sam,

“So the main point seems to be, to me, that we are always either actively emitting – often broadcasting – signals (trying to communicate to signal a specific message) or passively emitting (ie, the receiver is reading a perceived message into our being). We cannot *not* communicate/broadcast as doing so would *also* send a message. And as humans are sexual beings, *one* level of the active/passive communication is always sexual. And I think Tim has a point if he’s implying that in feminist discourse, this sender/receiver concept doesn’t get much recognition and is even often explicitly denied because there seems to be a belief that accepting this (logical) point would lead to more rape victim blaming or is seen as “objectifying”.”

Well put. Historically, female senders were blamed for every miscommunication (“She led me on, she deserved it!”); now it seems like feminism wants to blame male receivers for them all (“We’ll dress and act how we want thanks, but don’t let us catch you leering!”). I’m not saying these are equivalent in “badness” (obviously a woman being raped is far more serious than a man made to feel bad because he was perceived as leering), but neither is ideal.

Sam, from the “Saucebox” link you gave:

“Feminism objects to men forcing women to deal with their sexual desires without regard for whether women want to deal with them or not, at any level.”

This is actually closely related to what I am asking for, with sex roles reversed. Women who choose to dress in a provocative way are forcing (many but not all) men to deal with their own (i.e the men’s own) sexual desires, whether they want to or not.

I think the solution is not to pretend that no men have these urges or to demonise those who do, but rather to acknowledge that some do, that this is not in itself bad, but that those men are capable of suppressing these urges and ought to do so when they are unwelcome.

Agreed, to a point. I would certainly be uncomfortable with someone having an urge to rape someone, rather than to just have sex with them. Or (more extremely) to murder someone. Etc. I think there are some urges like that which can be “bad” in a sense. But I agree that it is the actions, not the urges, that are actually ethical/unethical.

And I agree that a desire or urge to be sexual with another person is quite specifically not a bad desire or urge. (Although I do struggle with the feeling that it is in myself.)

The view you both share, as I see it, is that because you rationally know the outcome of acting on an urge will not be satisfying, you could not have expended effort in suppressing that urge in the first place — correct?

All I was doing was communicating my own experience: if there is any effort involved, I do not personally experience it as such. And I don’t think it’s a rational thing, but more an empathy and socialization thing. I’m not rationally deconstructing the situation and thinking “gee, sexual assault and rape wouldn’t be satisfying” (although I certainly imagine it wouldn’t be). I’m more at a gut level feeling that it’s just not okay. If I were to rationally expound upon that gut feeling, it would probably involve not wanting to hurt the other person, not wanting to create nasty consequences for myself, and just generally not feeling satisfied by the act. But that’s not how I experience it.

It’s very much not like resisting eating junk food. I have to rationally try to convince myself not to do it in those cases, and actively exert effort not to eat the junk food. That is not how I experience sexual urges, at least not towards strangers.

Things do become a bit different if I’m in an existing sexual relationship, although I still wouldn’t compare it to the junk food experience. It’s still more like the burger example, where I just know it’s not okay to steal someone’s burger. Except in a longer term sexual relationship, I might come to expect that we share a burger just because we always had before, and it could indeed be off-putting in a very different way if suddenly I was refused said burger.

Although it might be comforting to women to think that men do not in fact have these urges, my experience tells me that at least one man does. While I accept that this may genuinely not be your (Sam’s or Cessen’s) own experience, I think the solution is not to pretend that no men have these urges or to demonise those who do, but rather to acknowledge that some do, that this is not in itself bad, but that those men are capable of suppressing these urges and ought to do so when they are unwelcome.

This whole thing reminds me of the frustrations that y’all have expressed with “Hey Baby” at the end of the megathread. You seem frustrated that women are expressing our feelings about the ridiculous levels of street harassment we sometimes experience (and yes, Sam, those experiences are heavily shaped by race and class and neighborhood, so it’s not surprising that women who live in more homogeneous or higher-class areas wouldn’t have them). You seem frustrated that we don’t have much advice to offer beyond, “Don’t just fail to harass women on the street; also, be sensitive to the fact that we’re experiencing street harassment”. Do you see this as analogous to how I might feel about all these think-about-how-you-dress injunctions?

I still feel as though you aren’t acknowledging the fact that (a) so many men have different desires that it would be really hard for women to effectively “watch ourselves”, even if (b) the mores weren’t constantly shifting between both cultures and time periods. To quote from the Soc Images link I provided, Forty-eight percent think that purses should not be worn across the body (19% aren’t sure). I mean, that would never have occurred to me, and now I’m insensitive because I’m not worried enough about Christian men’s purse-strap desires? Here’s another quotation from that link:

Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce). “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).

In addition, these rules are potentially changing all the time. A “technically modest” outfit, such as a school uniform, can suddenly have immodest connotations (so watch MTV, girls, to stay on top of these shifting meanings): [image]

This is a great deal of self-monitoring for girls. Not just when they shop, but when they get dressed, and all day as they move, and with constant re-evaluation of their clothes and how they fit. But, the rationale is, they must be vigilant and obey these rules in order to protect guys from the power of all bodies (both their own sexiness, and men’s biological response to it).

This is not a small proposition you are making when you claim that women ought to constantly worry about how hot we are. You’re saying that we should go through a lot of work, basically. Maybe that’s reasonable. Not sure. But since your case seems pretty much to be “wouldn’t it be nice if you were more considerate”, I’m just saying that you’re asking a lot more than just “being considerate”.

“I’m just saying that you’re asking a lot more than just “being considerate”.”

No, I’m not. *The guys in that ridiculous study* are asking for a lot more, but I’m not. I’ll say it again, since it seems I’m not getting through: when a woman *intentionally* dresses/behaves to sexualise herself (i.e. when she consciously thinks to herself, “I will put this on/behave this way because it makes me look hot”), I feel she is imposing on me. She may *affect* me (cause sexual urges) whether or not she intends to do so, but I’m happy to be responsible for managing all those urges that were induced unintentionally — that’s just “a part of life” as far as I’m concerned. (I really, really hope no girl is so browbeaten that she has to think twice about stretching near me!) I’m less happy about quieting those urges that were induced *intentionally*, though I ultimately believe it is my duty to do so and I accept that. It is those *intentionally-induced* urges that I want women to think about, and only those. I have never claimed that “women ought to constantly worry about how hot [they] are”!

My opinion of the guys in that study is that they are (possibly unconsciously) trying to place women in a situation that is close to impossible, and certainly very unfair. They are evidently from a Christian group that emphasises abstinence, and possibly looks down on masturbation as well. I have big problems with any religion that treats masturbation as sinful — to me it is the ideal, healthy escape valve for these urges. I’m inclined to cut the guys in this study a little slack if they have been brought up in an environment where sex outside of wedlock *and* masturbation are viewed as evil, and prefer to put most of the blame on the religion itself for the ridiculous suggestions they make. (Diagonal purse straps = sinful? If they really mean that the purse strap could ever-so-slightly emphasise a woman’s breasts, and that therefore women should try to refrain from letting this happen, then I have to laugh.)

“I would certainly be uncomfortable with someone having an urge to rape someone”

Truth is I’m a bit uncomfortable with it too. And with urges to murder etc. But I really believe we have to train ourselves to evaluate people based on the choices they make. Unfortunately it doesn’t always feel natural to do this.

“It’s still more like the burger example, where I just know it’s not okay to steal someone’s burger.”

It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever even considered stealing someone else’s burger in a situation like this either, despite being really hungry. So in this case I think I have somehow internalised the social norms. The frustration is there, but there’s no course of action that requires effort to suppress, and that does make it easier to deal with! (Well, it might just be that I’m fortunate never to have been in a situation desperate enough — while OTOH I frequently feel sexually “desperate”.) I wish my sexual urges were more like this, simply because it would mean lower frustration levels to manage.

Actually… just the other day I remember being very hungry and seeing someone else’s tasty-looking snacks in the cupboard at work, and the thought of stealing one did cross my mind… It’s a bit disconcerting that I thought of it then, when the owner wasn’t present, but never when the owner is right there! Hmmm…

I’ll say it again, since it seems I’m not getting through: when a woman *intentionally* dresses/behaves to sexualise herself (i.e. when she consciously thinks to herself, “I will put this on/behave this way because it makes me look hot”), I feel she is imposing on me.

What about women who are intentionally trying to look hot but failing? Are they imposing on you?

Also: Does the setting matter? Is a woman who consciously dresses to look hot at a nightclub imposing on you more, less, or the same amount as a woman who consciously dresses to look hot at work? Is a man who dresses to look hot imposing on me? Personally, I think certain kinds of bruises can be insanely hot. So should people who wear bruises around me be thinking about the effect that they’re having?

I mean, I’m willing to buy that people are ethically obligated to be careful about their sexual displays in public (for example, I don’t support public sexual intercourse in venues where onlookers haven’t consented to participate), but I guess I feel like clothing is too … flexible? culturally dependent? … to incur those kinds of obligations. I’m willing to speculate that men (with medium to high testosterone levels) may have inherently more pressing sexual urges than women (with average testosterone levels), and it’s obvious that most men are turned on by visual stimuli, whether that’s a culturally imprinted tendency or not. And I appreciate the fact that you seem to have no inclination to actually police women’s behavior. But I’m just having trouble accepting this idea that people (let’s get away from the gendered language, since that seems irrelevant to the point you’re making) have a responsibility to feel concerned about the hypothetical sexual desires of strangers.

“I’m willing to buy that people are ethically obligated to be careful about their sexual displays in public …
But I’m just having trouble accepting this idea that people have a responsibility to feel concerned about the hypothetical sexual desires of strangers.”

I think that’s at least a little contradictory. There are probably other reasons to be concerned about public sex than arousing others but I’d say that concern about arousing others is one element, don’t you think?

“Does the setting matter?”

Of course it does. Apart from things that are entirely idioyncratic, I’d say that transgressions of setting-standards are perceived as sexually provocative. In an office environment a short(er) skirt than usual, or a particularly revealing blouse can be quite distracting and arousing for me. Yet at the same time I can talk to a female friend lying naked right in front of me in a sauna (happened last night) – nudity is the appropriate attire there. But I had to change the subject when she started talking about nipple types – minor transgression. There was also, at some point, a woman massaging her boyfriend in a rather sensual way which I perceived as a major transgression of the setting-appropriate (non sexual nudity) standard.

“I’m willing to speculate that men (with medium to high testosterone levels) may have inherently more pressing sexual urges than women (with average testosterone levels), and it’s obvious that most men are turned on by visual stimuli, whether that’s a culturally imprinted tendency or not.”

I think it’s far too universal to be explained as a cultural artefact alone…

“What about women who are intentionally trying to look hot but failing? Are they imposing on you?”

Good question. As it happens, I don’t feel this to be imposing on me. Theoretically I might be “entitled” to (according to the framework I’m proposing), but I don’t, and I think it’s because I’ve always instinctively felt pity for women who are physically unattractive. It seems to me they have drawn one of the shortest straws going. I don’t feel that way every time I see an unattractive woman I might add, but in a situation involving a woman trying to look hot but failing, in my experience that almost always means simply that the woman’s “baseline” level of physical attractiveness is pretty low and then I feel a bit sorry for her, or maybe embarrassed for her if she has clearly crossed the “slut threshold” in her style of dress. I suppose the criteria you give (“trying to look hot but failing”) could also be met by a naturally attractive woman with no sense of what looks good on her… But I can’t say I’ve ever noticed that happening.

“Does the setting matter? Is a woman who consciously dresses to look hot at a nightclub imposing on you more, less, or the same amount as a woman who consciously dresses to look hot at work?”

Yes setting matters. If I go to a nightclub, I do so knowing there will be women dressed hot and I expect to deal with that (and likewise I think women who go there should expect to deal with leering (but not harassing or groping) guys). While at work OTOH, men (a) have much less choice about their attendance and (b) some behaviours that I regard as OK in general (e.g. leering) are not OK, so intentionally dressing hot there creates a more one-sided situation and thus is more aggravating.

As you say it applies to all people, men and women. It seems to me that men are much more visually stimulated than women — but certainly a guy who intentionally dresses/behaves in a way designed to titillate women falls into the same category (I just rate his chances of success a bit lower ;) )

“Personally, I think certain kinds of bruises can be insanely hot. So should people who wear bruises around me be thinking about the effect that they’re having?”

This is where I think you start veering off what I’m talking about, which is the *message-sender’s intent*. If the guy wears the bruises because he knows you, or some other woman, or women in general find them hot, then yes, I think he is imposing on you by expecting you to contain the reaction he has deliberately created. But I would wager most guys don’t suspect that.

Really, the situation as I see it is analogous to this: If someone steps on my toe by accident, it hurts, and I might feel a flicker of anger, but I recognise that it was unintentional and don’t let it bother me. If someone deliberately stomps on my toe, the pain (the physical effect on me) is the same, but I’m much, much angrier about it!

Finally, Sam, I too tend to find women in smart business attire insanely hot, much hotter than a naked woman. And I’ve had to put up with sharing a spa with a beautiful colleague in a bikini. But I think the woman who laid next to you, naked, and started talking about nipples was trying to goad you. A lot of people, including some women, love seeing how far they can push people. I would have told her flatly that I think her behaviour is childish. Sam, you don’t have to take that! Show some balls, man! You can be a considerate person without being a doormat :)

“I would have told her flatly that I think her behaviour is childish. Sam, you don’t have to take that! Show some balls, man! You can be a considerate person without being a doormat :)”

I can and I am. And she wasn’t goading me. The nipple thing made (some peripheral) sense in what we were talking about, so it would have been perfectly ok if hadn’t been for the nudity factor involved. It wasn’t intentional.

“I’m willing to speculate that men (with medium to high testosterone levels) may have inherently more pressing sexual urges than women (with average testosterone levels), and it’s obvious that most men are turned on by visual stimuli, whether that’s a culturally imprinted tendency or not.”

“All the evidence we have reviewed points toward the conclusion that men desire sex more than women. Although some of the findings were more methodologically rigorous than others, the unanimous convergence across all measures and findings increases confidence. We did not find a single study, on any of nearly a dozen different measures, that found women had a stronger sex drive than men. We think that the combined quantity,
quality, diversity, and convergence of the evidence render the conclusion indisputable. Turning to the causes of gender differences in sex drive, it would be premature to declare that a substantial part of the gender difference in sex drive is biologically innate, but we think the evidence is pointing in that direction (not least because of the apparent consistency of
the difference). Biological processes, including the substantial gender difference in testosterone, have been implicated
as determining sex drive. Although most findings pertain to modern America, a smattering of findings from other cultures continues to depict the male sex drive as stronger. Cultural influences have sought to stifle some aspects of female sexuality, but we found the
difference in sex drive even in sexual spheres (such as marital sex) where culture has supported and encouraged female sexual desire, so stifling should not be relevant. Personally we would like to believe that culture and socialization could be modified so as to make the female sex drive precisely the same as the male sex drive (because that would seemingly foster more harmonious
relationships), but our review of the literature does not offer much encouragement to that view. *Certainly anyone seeking to advocate that view of total cultural relativity faces a substantial burden of proof.*
Regardless of whether the gender difference in sex drive is universal or is a product of modern Western culture, it is important for understanding close relationships and sexual behavior today. According to the principle of least interest (Waller & Hill, 1938/1951), social interactions will be shaped by the fact that the
person who wants something more than the other is in a dependent position and will usually have to offer the other some inducements. Hence many male–female romantic interactions will take the form of the man offering the woman some resources (commitment, flattery,
food, entertainment, money, companionship) to induce her to commence a sexual relationship.”

@Sam — There are probably other reasons to be concerned about public sex than arousing others but I’d say that concern about arousing others is one element, don’t you think?

Um … hmm. Not for me. :shrug: Maybe for some people. And I’ve never seen an argument against public sex framed that way.

I think it’s far too universal to be explained as a cultural artefact alone…

Universality isn’t very good evidence, in my opinion. Assuming it is very universal (and the variance in visual standards alone makes this seem like a weird assumption to me), it may happen because it’s a common mechanism for dealing with other very common or universal cultural factors (e.g. if most societies attempt to rigidly control female sexuality more than male, then women are obviously going to be less likely to react to visual stimuli).

@Tim — I’ve always instinctively felt pity for women who are physically unattractive. It seems to me they have drawn one of the shortest straws going.

Heh. Wow dude. I understand what you’re trying to say, but you aren’t going to want to say it in 95% of feminist spaces ….

This is where I think you start veering off what I’m talking about, which is the *message-sender’s intent*.

My problem is that I don’t think people can ever reasonably be expected to know what kind of stimuli will turn a stranger on, or even a friend. Only partners, assuming those partners are being honest.

If someone steps on my toe by accident, it hurts, and I might feel a flicker of anger, but I recognise that it was unintentional and don’t let it bother me. If someone deliberately stomps on my toe, the pain (the physical effect on me) is the same, but I’m much, much angrier about it!

Okay … so, given that you’re never going to have complete assurance that you know someone’s intent in how she dresses, are you saying that you never get angry about how women dress?

I mean, look … I agree with your basic premise, if your basic premise really is nothing more than “wouldn’t it be nice if people took other people’s life experience into account”. But it just seems like you’ve got an awful lot of assumptions about “what turns on most men”, and you’re centering your argument around this stereotypical male sexuality that doesn’t work for many men and is a product of a specific time and place. And I find it hard to believe that you really do lack any expectations whatsoever for how people should act, rather than just think, if their attire might turn someone else on.

Sam, you don’t have to take that! Show some balls, man! You can be a considerate person without being a doormat :)

Wow again. Wasn’t there a conversation about cultural constructions of masculinity around here somewhere?

@Sam again — *Certainly anyone seeking to advocate that view of total cultural relativity faces a substantial burden of proof.*

Really? Because their definition of “strong sex drive” is that immune to critique, is it? As are their measurements of arousal? Dude, we are still in a world where top-quoted studies of sexuality measure male arousal (for example) by whether or not a dude gets an erection, which is insanely problematic. And how are they defining their so-called “cultures that support female sexuality”? Because if the USA is in that category, I’m done with the study already. Encouraging women to act like stereotypical men, sexually, is not the same as supporting female sexuality.

Clarisse, for inexplicable reasons it’s really hard for me to be nice to people on Tuesdays, but I’ll try.

Also, here’s something I don’t get, Motley, but it’s more a personal question than philosophical. You seemed really frustrated in the Megathread when I talked about how I work hard to be sensitive to the potential triggers of my trans activist friend. You seem more open to the idea that I should work hard to be sensitive to potential triggers of men who are attracted to me. Am I misunderstanding you, or do you see a difference between the situations?

Over in the Megathread, I pointed out that if someone can’t be bothered to make an effort to control himself, then I’m not interested in making an effort to be that person’s friend (and I don’t really see why anyone would be).

Over here, I’m pointing out that knowingly triggering someone while simultaneously expecting them not to be triggered is kind of an asshole thing to do.

Obviously, I don’t think these two claims are in any way inconsistent.

But seriously, did you miss the part where the dudes interviewed in that piece started instructing women that they ought to dress in a more modest way?

Seriously, if you stop pretending that the group of guys in the survey are All Men Everywhere, and that the other people who frequent that website are All Women Everywhere, the whole thing will make more sense. Pretending that a limited qualified statement is actually an unlimited, unqualified statement, so’s to attack it, is not a particularly compelling tactic (that pretense is the central component of lisa’s piece).

So: The people involved with that survey are not All Men Everywhere, and they do not speak for the rest of us. I think this answers all of the points you raise about it. (And, for what it’s worth, displaying the traits they look for in a potential spouse is only relevant to you if you’re looking to marry one of those guys.)

This whole thing reminds me of the frustrations that y’all have expressed with “Hey Baby” at the end of the megathread. You seem frustrated that women are expressing our feelings about the ridiculous levels of street harassment we sometimes experience

Hmm. I can’t think of a formulation that less-accurately describes that conversation while still maintaining plausible deniability. Well-played.
Unless the intention wasn’t to be dishonest, in which case, epic fail.

I actually had a period where I was willing to buy the “T is more mind-altering” thing, but then I posted about it… So I still consider the debate not settled.

No. Let us be very, very clear on one thing: There is no debate. A bunch of people whose experience you do not share have told you of their experience, and you are dismissing them as liars. Despite the fact that all the science supports their conclusion and not yours, and that you have no reason whatsoever to doubt them.
Which is a pretty shitty thing to do.
Out of curiosity, got any justification for this bullshit that doesn’t rely on simple prejudice?

But while we’re on the topic, let’s apply your “logic” to street harassment: I’ve gotten whistled at by a woman, and thought it was funny. Therefore, when y’all claim not to enjoy street harassment, you are all lying.
Neat, huh?

@ Cessen & Tim

Truth is I’m a bit uncomfortable with it too. And with urges to murder etc. But I really believe we have to train ourselves to evaluate people based on the choices they make. Unfortunately it doesn’t always feel natural to do this..

Heh. Glad to hear it. And the more I think about it now, the more I’m fond of the burger analogy.
So now if I told you about my urges, you’d get very uncomfortable indeed. I’m resisting the temptation, though. For the same reason that y’all don’t consider stealing a burger in front of the person eating it.

@ Sam –

I can and I am. And she wasn’t goading me. The nipple thing made (some peripheral) sense in what we were talking about, so it would have been perfectly ok if hadn’t been for the nudity factor involved. It wasn’t intentional.

Out of curiosity, Sam, (though admittedly only semi-seriously), and this is more of an overall trend than necessarily about this anecdote, is there any passive-aggressive goading that a woman couldn’t get away with around you? I mean, what would someone have to do to convince you that her motives aren’t purely innocent?

Anyway, picking on Clarisse again for a sec:

Universality isn’t very good evidence, in my opinion.

So the fact that a phenomenon is universal across cultures is not enough proof (for you) that it isn’t a cultural trope. Interesting. There’s nothing that you would accept as such proof, is there.
Like your bizarre idea that testosterone doesn’t do anything and that every male, every transman, and every scientist involved are all lying, this seems to be one of those political/prejudicial ideas that is immune to evidence.

My problem is that I don’t think people can ever reasonably be expected to know what kind of stimuli will turn a stranger on, or even a friend.

Unless I’m totally misreading this passage, that’s bullshit, and you know it, and I know you know it.

Really? Because their definition of “strong sex drive” is that immune to critique, is it?

Immune to critique, no. Simply declaring that all men are liars, though, is not actually a critique. Have you got one? (No, it isn’t enough to just declare that all of my life experiences are meaningless due to my lack of a vagina.)

*Certainly anyone seeking to advocate that view of total cultural relativity faces a substantial burden of proof.*

that wasn’t my conclusion, it was the authors’. I merely added the asterixes.

I supppose defining the term “strength” is paramount.

I’m fine with incommensurability, as you seem to suggest, as it is kind of the logical assumption, although it is *also*, at least implicitly, accepting biological differences and shifting the unit of difference from “difference in quantity” to “difference in quality”.

I suppose the authors of the quoted study are aware of the incommensurability problem and limited the applicability of their results –

“The concept of sex drive, if defined in a fairly precise manner, can be effectively distinguished from other concepts, and the greater male sex drive does not entail greater male sexuality in those other terms. We suggested that women’s capacity for sex may be greater than men’s in the sense that women are capable
of engaging in more sex and having more orgasms than men. We concluded that there is no definite answer to the question of whether men enjoy sex more than women. We also suggested that women may surpass men in extrinsically motivated sex, although a definite conclusion is elusive in that sphere too. For present purposes, the crucial point is that the greater male sex drive does not entail greater capacity, greater enjoyment, or greater extrinsic motivation.”

That said, this was a meta study by social psychologists (who usually aren’t going to be particularly interested in results that take subject matters *out* of their discipline and will likely be far more critical toward alleged biological explanations than, say, neurobiologists) looked at studies dealing with –

– Thoughts, Fantasies, and
Spontaneous Arousal

– Desired Frequency of Sex

– Desired Number of Sex Partners

– Masturbation

– Willingness to forego sex

– Emergence of sexual desire

– Seeking vs Avoiding, initiating vs. refusing

– liking for various sexual practices

– sacrificing resources to get sex

– favorable attitudes toward sex

– Prevalence of low sexual desire

– Self-rated sex drive

and with respect to those variables they found that –

“By all measures, men have a stronger sex drive than women. Men think about sex more often, experience more frequent sexual arousal, have more frequent and varied fantasies, desire sex more often, desire more partners, masturbate more, want sex sooner, are less able or willing to live without sexual gratification, initiate more and refuse less sex, expend more resources and make more sacrifices for sex, desire and enjoy a broader variety of sexual practices, have more favorable and permissive attitudes toward most sexual activities, have fewer complaints about low sex drive in themselves (but more about their partners), and rate their sex drives as stronger than women. There were no measures that showed women having stronger drives than men.”

So, evidently, it is logically impossible to settle the nature/nurture problem as it is all embodied and disentangling, particularly including things such as epigenetics, is simply not possible. That’s a sad fact we simply have to accept – we will probably never know for sure. But I think we can conclude, as do the authors in the sentence that I highlighted and you quoted, that the evidence is *pointing* in one direction: That culture is not the only responsible variable, that there is an innate biological element involved that seems to make sexuality a more immediate concern in most men’s minds than it seems to be (allowing for significant overlaps and intra-gender variation, of course) the case for women.

Motley can be frustratingly snarky, but he often has good things to say. I think even he will understand if you give up on him, though ;)

I don’t give up on people who show some capability for rational thought, which he has shown. And it’s not the snark I mind — I find that amusing, though it does weaken his position.

Rather, it seems that every time either of us look at his arguments and say, “If what you’re saying is true, then X is also true,” he whines, “You’re not listening at all to what I’m saying and you’re purposefully taking it in the most absurd possible way!” Does he ever stop to think that if multiple people are misunderstanding him, then perhaps the error in communication isn’t theirs? Hard to have a discussion with someone who cries foul whenever you counter the logic of his statements. We could have a real discourse if he would clarify what both what he is actually saying and where the miscommunication was, instead of saying “it’s self-evident so I don’t have to prove it” and “you’re making my statements look absurd when you know they’re not” (hint: many of your statements do seem pretty absurd, in the way that you’re making them).

“Out of curiosity, Sam, (though admittedly only semi-seriously), and this is more of an overall trend than necessarily about this anecdote, is there any passive-aggressive goading that a woman couldn’t get away with around you? I mean, what would someone have to do to convince you that her motives aren’t purely innocent?”

She could say so? Just kidding ;) Thing is, I wouldn’t go to a sauna with a woman about whose motives with respect to our relationship I would be unsure.

@Motley — Clarisse, for inexplicable reasons it’s really hard for me to be nice to people on Tuesdays, but I’ll try.

Honestly, dude. Is this what you call “trying”? You failed. I’m ignoring you until you try harder, since requests don’t seem to work.

@Sam — heh. Yes. I decided it was time for a theme change.

But I think we can conclude, as do the authors in the sentence that I highlighted and you quoted, that the evidence is *pointing* in one direction: That culture is not the only responsible variable, that there is an innate biological element involved that seems to make sexuality a more immediate concern in most men’s minds than it seems to be (allowing for significant overlaps and intra-gender variation, of course) the case for women.

Sure, I guess we can conclude the evidence is arguably pointing in one direction. Now where are we?

For the record, I’m more inclined to go with the “it’s a little bit physical and a little bit cultural” approach rather than one or the other. I probably overreact because as a good feminist I get worried that the physical evidence/arguments are used to disappear, ignore, or otherwise unfairly marginalize the cultural ones.

Uh oh. I just realized that although this theme is about a million times better than the old one, it doesn’t seem to show comment numbers, which might make it harder to navigate these superlong threads. It does make it easy to link to specific comments though (the hashtag on each comment).

“For the record, I’m more inclined to go with the “it’s a little bit physical and a little bit cultural” approach rather than one or the other.”

But no one is reasonably making the claim that it is *all* biology. Interestingly, I am worried that feminism/sociology is attempting to “disappear, ignore, or otherwise unfairly marginalize” evidence of biological differences between the sexes (as, say, indicated by the now common almost synonymous use of “sex” and “gender”). I read the statement as saying that people who make “blank slate” statements about the construct discussed in the article should be careful, but no one would contest your assumption of “it’s a little bit physical and a little bit cultural” (assuming by “physical” you mean “innate”). I mean, just look at the variables. There can be no doubt they are culturally culturally influenced. Just the extent of the cultural influence is debatable. And it’s not 100%…

ok, (fourth comment in a row!) I need to go home before it gets dark. I’ll try to either figure out a way around the blockquote thing or change the theme (:cry:) in the next few days. or possibly spring for $15, although I can ill afford it :P

“Heh. Wow dude. I understand what you’re trying to say, but you aren’t going to want to say it in 95% of feminist spaces ….”

How is feeling pity for unattractive women trying to look hot (something you apparently find appalling) worse than observing that more attractive women are almost always more powerful than less attractive women (something with which I believe you agreed earlier on)? I frequently feel pity for people who unfairly have too little power, and envy/disgust for those who have too much. Isn’t that a natural response? I suggest you direct your sense of bemusement/outrage to that 95% of feminist spaces.

“My problem is that I don’t think people can ever reasonably be expected to know what kind of stimuli will turn a stranger on, or even a friend.”

Many women know what *frequently* turns *most* men on, and sometimes those women *deliberately* choose to dress/behave in an *attempt* to trigger sexual impulses in some or all of the men that they see. Is there any part of the preceding sentence that you disagree with? If so, which part? If you disagree with my notion that many women know what frequently turns most men on, then I have to agree with Motley that you’re being disingenuous.

I’m *not* talking about knowing precisely what will turn a specific stranger on. Do you see that that’s irrelevant to my argument? My argument is about *intent*, and the effect that intent has when it succeeds. Which it frequently does (but not 100% of the time).

“Wow again. Wasn’t there a conversation about cultural constructions of masculinity around here somewhere?”

Only Sam knows the details of the situation, so Sam I’m sorry if I misread it, but I was simply encouraging him to stick up for himself. That’s something I feel *both men and women* should do, and frankly I feel a bit ridiculous having to explain this. I suppose I could have said “Sam, stick up for yourself!” instead of “Show some balls!” but I thought this was more colourful. I would have said the exact same thing (“balls” included) to a woman I felt was being treated like a doormat. (Yes, there would have been a hint of irony because biological women lack testicles, but the intended meaning is identical.)

Sam,

“But no one is reasonably making the claim that it is *all* biology. Interestingly, I am worried that feminism/sociology is attempting to “disappear, ignore, or otherwise unfairly marginalize” evidence of biological differences between the sexes”

That captures it nicely. In fact a lot of the controversial statements on this thread would become a lot clearer if everybody (myself included) paid more attention to when they and others apply the universal quantifier.

“Heh. Wow dude. I understand what you’re trying to say, but you aren’t going to want to say it in 95% of feminist spaces ….”

Sorry if I overreacted there, I see now that you could have meant it like, “You’re lucky you said that here, in one of the 5% of feminist spaces where we understand what you mean and don’t think there’s something objectionable about feeling pity for others.” My initial interpretation was that you were saying I was wrong to feel this way.

I’d instinctively agree with this statement, but thinking about it I can’t really figure out whether the statement would be considered problematic because of the not too careful, slightly patronizing wording – “felt pity for women who are physically unattractive” – instead of using euphemisms like “empathized with the problems of unconventionally attractive women” – or because male sexual desire for “conventional female beauty” is actually generally considered unfeminist, possibly objectifying in itself (as per “male gaze”)? I think the latter would be unfair policing of male desires, but somehow I can’t shake the feeling that the assumed problematic nature of the statement in 95% of feminist spaces is informed by that latter aspect to a non-trivial degree…

Thanks Sam. I accept that pitying someone is a bit patronising. But the way I see it, endlessly cloaking things in euphemisms is actually pretty patronising too. It’s like saying, “I believe you are so weak and helpless that you can’t handle the possible truth of what I’m talking about”. (Me, I have a big nose; I describe myself as “nasally empowered” for laughs. :) )

Clarisse, I should also answer this point you raised in response to my stepping-on-toes analogy:

“Okay … so, given that you’re never going to have complete assurance that you know someone’s intent in how she dresses, are you saying that you never get angry about how women dress?”

It’s really simple. My “righteous anger” response (my sense that the woman is taking something from me) is based on whether *I think* the woman dressed/behaved intentionally to draw sexual attention to herself. Just as my anger w.r.t. having my toe stepped on depends on whether *I think* the person did it deliberately. I could be wrong in my estimation of course, but so what — I’m not proposing that I be entitled to any action based on my perception of the woman’s intent.

Motley, must you always boil everything down to “lying” vs. “not lying”? And is it just you who gets to accuse people of lying? Because I can think of many places off the top of my head where you’ve done it. And, for the record, I didn’t claim anyone was lying, although I seem to recall that I quoted someone who did.

@Tim — Sorry if I overreacted there, I see now that you could have meant it like, “You’re lucky you said that here, in one of the 5% of feminist spaces where we understand what you mean and don’t think there’s something objectionable about feeling pity for others.” My initial interpretation was that you were saying I was wrong to feel this way.

Your second interpretation was correct. Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as judgmental.

My job has been really rough lately and I’ve felt my temper slipping more and more over the past few months. I’m sure it’s showing here (I mean, I’ve rarely totally lost patience with Motley before, for example :P)

It’s really simple. My “righteous anger” response (my sense that the woman is taking something from me) is based on whether *I think* the woman dressed/behaved intentionally to draw sexual attention to herself. Just as my anger w.r.t. having my toe stepped on depends on whether *I think* the person did it deliberately. I could be wrong in my estimation of course, but so what — I’m not proposing that I be entitled to any action based on my perception of the woman’s intent.

I guess. But, in a general sense, I’m not sure it’s productive to give ourselves license to angrily judge other people based on readings of their intent that are often likely to be wrong. And in this context, can you see why I’d be particularly bothered by the idea that it’s fine for you to assume that a woman is deliberately taunting you when she’s dressed to look hot?

Thanks for that. I’m sorry to hear that work has been rough lately. HIV work in Africa certainly sounds like work that could get all kinds of rough — hang in there! :)

“I’m not sure it’s productive to give ourselves license to angrily judge other people based on readings of their intent that are often likely to be wrong. And in this context, can you see why I’d be particularly bothered by the idea that it’s fine for you to assume that a woman is deliberately taunting you when she’s dressed to look hot?”

I don’t make that assumption automatically when a woman is dressed hot, there are other possible explanations, but I take as good evidence in favour. And, while it may not be productive to have those judgmental feelings, they’re practically unavoidable. If you think about it, trying not to ever feel slighted when a group of people repeatedly causes you frustration, and you know that at least some of the time that frustration is *intended* by some in that group (even if you don’t know with 100% accuracy which people and which times those are), is actually contrary to *maintaining self-respect*.

I believe I can demonstrate this clearly, because with a few word changes, it closely mirrors how I imagine it would feel like to be a woman who is frequently ogled by men. Namely: it happens repeatedly; although occasionally welcome and even sought-after, it’s almost always unwelcome and gross/unpleasant to some degree; you rationally realise many guys don’t ogle with the intent to make you feel uncomfortable but it has that effect anyway; when you suspect they *are* doing it with the intent to *make you feel* sexualised/objectified, then in addition to the involuntary feeling of unpleasantness, you also feel some righteous anger. Is that about right? (By all means correct me, this is just how I imagine it works.) I’ve just switched the sexes and replaced “dress hot” with “ogle” and “sexual frustration” with “unpleasant feeling of being sexualised/objectified”.

Now suppose a woman is being ogled by a man, and feels he is deliberately intending to make her feel like an object. I don’t ask her not to feel angry about it, just because she could be wrong in her estimation of the guy’s intentions — by all means, she can feel angry, any self-respecting person trusts their own judgment on these things — but I do expect her to contain her reaction. And likewise, I’m comfortable with having those feelings of anger towards women I strongly suspect are consciously trying to grab sexual attention — I think it’s enough, and healthy, for me to just contain my outward reaction.

Motley,

Just wanted to say that I think you’re coming from a very similar place to me and you’ve said some really good stuff here, despite things sometimes getting argumentative. Hope you’ll stick around :)

And, for the record, I didn’t claim anyone was lying, although I seem to recall that I quoted someone who did.

Yes, you did. If I claimed that I used to buy the claim that women don’t enjoy street harassment, but that now I consider the “debate” to be “not settled,” then yes, I’d essentially be claiming that women were lying when they related their experiences. If I described the issue of whether or not you are in Africa right now as a “debate” that is “not settled,” then I would be claiming that you were lying.
Testosterone is mind-altering. Men know this, transmen know this most of all, and every scientist who’s ever studied it knows this. There’s no “debate,” and to claim not to buy it is to claim that everyone who has the experience is lying about it.
Hint: Claiming that the other sex is universally lying about their experience is a shitty thing to do. Particularly when you have absolutely zero reason for doubting them, other than prejudice.

Motley, must you always boil everything down to “lying” vs. “not lying”? And is it just you who gets to accuse people of lying? Because I can think of many places off the top of my head where you’ve done it.

Really? Care to point out a few of these “many” places that you can think of off the top of your head?
It’s not something I do without good reason.* Unlike, say, accusing an entire sex of lying about their own experiences, based on no reason whatsoever.

*Though more often in the Motley persona, given the defining trait thereof, than in other interactions, because normally honesty isn’t as important to me as interpersonal politics. In this one, though, niceness is priority two, not priority one.

Tim,

Now suppose a woman is being ogled by a man, and feels he is deliberately intending to make her feel like an object.

Just as a heads-up, that seems to be the default assumption throughout most of the feminist blogosphere. So right now you’re discussing giving the benefit of the doubt in a space where it’s accepted-practice to extend you no such benefit. But it’s probably still important to note that a lot of this is internalized social norms, rather than actual deliberate malice (and yes, I am now asking you to extend a social courtesy that will likely not be extended to you); over in the megathread, even Clarisse used a common shaming tactic while claiming not to be able to tell the difference between that shaming tactic and a fact-based description – and I believed her completely, and still do.* Some of these things are just that deeply ingrained. (Hell, that’s probably true of most prejudice. Everybody thinks their own prejudices are simply facts, which is why talking to people with different prejudices than your own is really difficult; in a way, you very much live in different worlds.)

(*It’s the feels-threatened-by/does-not-like dichotomy. A search for the last couple uses of the word “ferrets” should bring up the tail-end of it.)

Motley,

Just wanted to say that I think you’re coming from a very similar place to me and you’ve said some really good stuff here, despite things sometimes getting argumentative. Hope you’ll stick around :)

Thanks; I’ve actually been thinking about retiring the Motley experiment for a while now, but not because of argumentative-ness or anything like that (more because it’s more-or-less fulfilled the purpose for which I began it, and due to not having quite enough time for it, what with other projects.) It’s been useful, though, and continues to be enjoyable (though admittedly frustrating at times), so I’ll likely end up sticking around for a bit longer.

Oh, before I forget it – anecdote regarding women not being aware of their attractivity/seductive potential/doing it on purpose or not.

A female friend of mine is one of the most attractive women I know, including people I only know from the silver screen. Yet the last couple of times we met she was complaining about how men never seem to approach her and how her female friend is getting all the male attention. When she walks through a club everyone else can see the heads turning, she apparently can’t. She asked me if I could see a reason for her not being approached while her friend was and I said “sure, I can totally see why” (meaning, guys will be intimidated by her beauty and not so much by her friend’s), but she apparently thought my statement would confirm her “I’m not attractive enough”-theory. When I noticed that I expanded the explanation and I hope I helped a little, but her lack of awareness regarding her physical attractivity is still baffling to me. When she dresses seductively, she will likely not be aware of the seductiveness of her apparel, she’ll dress that way to close the perceived gap between her and the women she perceives to me more attractive than her.

Motley, did you actually read the link I posted? Because what I actually wrote was, I think many feminists tend to regard this as a myth created by our culture, but I’ve often wondered whether there is — in a mild way — some truth behind it. I didn’t say that I thought men were lying, but I did quote one commenter who started her comment by saying “I too used to think men were lying”. I suppose you read this as saying that I had said I thought men were lying, but I, in fact, did not. As for places where you’ve implied that other people were lying, you just did it on this thread when you wrote to me:Hmm. I can’t think of a formulation that less-accurately describes that conversation while still maintaining plausible deniability. Well-played.
Unless the intention wasn’t to be dishonest, in which case, epic fail.

At any rate, I’m not actually all that interested in nitpicking a back-and-forth about who-said-what-that-was-mean-when. I just want you to be nicer. You’ve scared people off commenting in some threads and you’ve definitely pissed me off personally on more than one occasion. I find it hard to believe that you actually can’t act more pleasant if you feel more motivated about it (eg, by the rest of us actually taking you to task for it rather than just laughing it off). I really enjoy a lot of what you say, seriously, and I think your perspective is really interesting, and sometimes you’re funny, and for all those reasons it’s taken me a long time to be so explicit about this, but your unapologetic occasional nastiness is just too distracting.

I mean, I think everyone else on these threads has actually apologized at least once or twice when we got overheated. Have you? Seriously, I just did a search on this thread. The word “sorry” came up 25 times. Every time you say it, it’s either sarcastic or patently insincere (e.g. “This is unavoidable. Sorry.”). Every time someone else says it, it’s clear that they actually feel like they screwed up and want to make up for it (e.g. “Sorry if I overreacted there”).

@Tim — Now suppose a woman is being ogled by a man, and feels he is deliberately intending to make her feel like an object. I don’t ask her not to feel angry about it, just because she could be wrong in her estimation of the guy’s intentions — by all means, she can feel angry, any self-respecting person trusts their own judgment on these things — but I do expect her to contain her reaction. And likewise, I’m comfortable with having those feelings of anger towards women I strongly suspect are consciously trying to grab sexual attention — I think it’s enough, and healthy, for me to just contain my outward reaction.

Now that we’ve thrashed out all the implications, I guess I can concede that this is reasonable. :grin: I hope I’ve successfully communicated why that line of discussion is so uncomfortable for feminists, though — it’s not because we have a rabid suppressing-male-desire agenda, it’s because we have a rabid protecting-ourselves-from-assault-and-negative-judgments-that-might-lead-to-attempts-to-modify-our-behavior agenda.

@Sam — When she walks through a club everyone else can see the heads turning, she apparently can’t.

I’ve had a few dates/boyfriends who told me that I created a stir when I walked around with them, but I honestly never saw it. I really, honestly do not know whether it’s that I didn’t actually create a stir and they were just being gallant, or I did create a stir but it’s just not visible to me for whatever reason.

Anyway, if it’s true, I don’t really want to revel in it, because I suspect that in my old age (26) my head-turningness is fading :P And this is an important factor to acknowledge — women are taught that beauty is power, yes, but we are also taught that it’s tied to a lot of factors we can’t control, and that a smart woman can’t depend on her beauty (or, sometimes, even allow herself to acknowledge it).

I have noticed as I got older that it’s become easier to tell when men are attracted to me.

beauty definitely is power, if used appropriately, as all other power dimensions. And as with all other power dimensions, it is tied to a lot of uncontrollable factors, of course.

“it’s not because we have a rabid suppressing-male-desire agenda, it’s because we have a rabid protecting-ourselves-from-assault-and-negative-judgments-that-might-lead-to-attempts-to-modify-our-behavior agenda.”

Here’s the tricky question: How do you turn these two agendas into a single one? Because, as I perceive it, the rabid “protecting-ourselves…” agenda is often executed in a manner that is certainly perceived in a “suppressing-male-desire”-kind of way, which, in turn, leads to more aggressive backlash, because it is considered unfairly overreaching. I wonder if this isn’t often seen as a rallying issue by feminists rather than one to actually talk about and jointly work on improvements.

Motley, did you actually read the link I posted? Because what I actually wrote was…

Yeah… but I took it as an expression of what you used to think, because of how I read these lines:

On the testosterone thing: I actually had a period where I was willing to buy the “T is more mind-altering” thing, but then I posted about it:
[link]
… and received one of my favorite comments ever:
[post claiming that “no, men actually are all just lying about their experience”]
…So I still consider the debate not settled.

I will reiterate, in an attempt to clarify: If a biologically-determined group of people (we’ll say “women,” for example) describes an experience that you do not share (we’ll say, if you’re male, describing street harassment as “unpleasant”), then it seems that to claim that the topic of “whether or not women enjoy street harassment” is somehow a “debate” that’s “not settled” is to say that all women are lying about it.
It seems somehow more egregious to make this claim based on the statements of people who are not in that group. (I mean, if I said “A man once got whistled at by a woman, which proves that street harassment isn’t unpleasant,” I’d both be accusing women of lying, and I’d be being sort of an asshole, right? A woman saying “Some women have strong-but-not-uncontrollable sex drives, so this proves that testosterone does not significantly increase sex drives” seems essentially identical to me.)

If you assume that women aren’t lying about whether they enjoy street harassment, and that males and transmen (and science) aren’t lying about the effects of testosterone, then there is no unsettled debate. Unless I’m missing something really important here, the only way there could possibly be any debate at all is if we take for granted that everyone involved is lying. And I think (unless I’m wildly mistaken) that you were saying, pretty clearly, that you used to think that men might not all be lying (that there might be “some” truth to men’s description of their own experience) but that now you considered it a “debate.” If there’s a way for it to be a debate without the assumption that everyone-who-has-the-experience is lying, I seriously can’t see what it is.
Really. I’m not just screwing with you there. (Emphasis on the “just.” I’m only sorta screwing with you.)

I mean, I think everyone else on these threads has actually apologized at least once or twice when we got overheated. Have you?

Heh. Yup. To briefly play who-said-what-when, (via a quick search of the other thread)

Rereading your original sentence, though, I think I was being unfair. Apologies.
–Motley, April 13, 2010. (The Megathread)

(As a side note, yeah, when I say “sorry” in this identity, I’m being snarky about 65% of the time, the other 35% of which I’m using it as shorthand for “I wish it was otherwise,” i.e., to acknowledge that someone is experiencing a negative effect. (The one you quoted was one of these 35%, for what it’s worth.) To come closer to sincerity I usually say things like “Apologies” as shorthand for “I think I am in the wrong and that an apology is appropriate here.”
(*I frequently use it conditionally, meaning “if x is the case, then you were right, and I am currently speaking ridiculous nonsense.”)
As to actual sincerity, opinions vary as to whether that last one actually counts. I think it’s as close as I can come to saying “sorry” and meaning it the normal way (i.e., an expression of a particular feeling) without violating the operating principle behind the Motley experiment, since I don’t know if I actually have any idea what it feels like to actually be sorry for something. I mean, it seems like if I said “sorry” meaning “I currently feel that particular combination of remorse and sympathy that people usually mean when they say that word,” then I think I’d be lying, automatically.)

That said, though? Yeah, I do tend to be too nasty to people, when I’m trying to be honest (or, as is more often the case out in real life, honest-ish) and the effects are much more intense in an impersonal medium (as people can’t tell when I’m angry and when I’m just screwing with someone to make a point).
But yeah. And I am trying. (Which is why I stopped responding to Sammael, and why I felt obligated to actually explain why I was going to stop doing so.)

Sam, Clarisse,

When she walks through a club everyone else can see the heads turning, she apparently can’t.
[Sam]I’ve had a few dates/boyfriends who told me that I created a stir when I walked around with them, but I honestly never saw it.
[Clarisse]

Huh. This rings a bell for me, too; I’ve known… I dunno, we’ll go with “lots,” of women with that same peculiarity. (No, I don’t know how exactly how many of ’em actually didn’t know, but I do think most of them honestly had no idea how attractive they were.) I’ve also noticed that this effect seems to mostly disappear by the age of thirty or so, far’s I can tell. Don’t really have any idea as to the why of it. Other than the suspicion that it’s got a lot to do with the peculiar skills of the advertising industry.

Clarisse,
On a semi-related note, anecdotally,Anyway, if it’s true, I don’t really want to revel in it, because I suspect that in my old age (26) my head-turningness is fading.

I’m informed that, early-to-mid thirties, the sudden ability to have relative privacy/anonymity, even in public, is refreshing and “awesome.” I’m also told that, mid-thirties and later, it starts to really suck.
(On another tangent, I’ve gotten to the age now that when a woman a couple years older than me catches me looking, she’ll usually smile (and often flirt) at me instead of looking nervous.)

Sam,Here’s the tricky question: How do you turn these two agendas into a single one? Because, as I perceive it, the rabid “protecting-ourselves…” agenda is often executed in a manner that is certainly perceived in a “suppressing-male-desire”-kind of way…

I have a suspicion that it’s worth pointing out that most of this takes place in a culture that is intensely and nigh-universally very sex-negative. I’ve got no doubt that our culture is swarming with people who hate male sexuality (and female sexuality, and no doubt every other kind, too) just because they grew up that way. And no doubt that plenty of those proceeded to grow up to be feminists, without losing that contempt for male sexuality (feminism does a fairly good job, in my admittedly-limited experience, of teaching its adherents to get over their loathing for female sexuality).

“Now that we’ve thrashed out all the implications, I guess I can concede that this is reasonable. :grin: I hope I’ve successfully communicated why that line of discussion is so uncomfortable for feminists, though — it’s not because we have a rabid suppressing-male-desire agenda, it’s because we have a rabid protecting-ourselves-from-assault-and-negative-judgments-that-might-lead-to-attempts-to-modify-our-behavior agenda.”

Great! “My work here is done.” :-P Seriously, I appreciate that you were willing to look past some preexisting thought patterns that, as you point out, have genuine survival value. I’ve been trying to do the same, without the threat of violence/coercion looming over me luckily, but it’s still tough work I find. I still mostly operate like this: (1) experience an emotion in response to something; (2) think of reasons why that response is valid/correct/good. I often wish it worked the other way round!

Sam, your beautiful friend is intentionally looking for male sexual attention with the way she dresses, so no, I would not exempt her from the category of women intentionally looking for male sexual attention with the way they dress. (Yes, I forwent the thesaurus on that sentence to make a point :-P) If she has that intention, and raises my sexual frustration levels through her actions, then the fact that she apparently doesn’t meet with much noticeable success, or doesn’t realise how successful she actually is, doesn’t enter into it for me. Not sure if you were trying to hold her up as an example of a dressed-hot woman who *ought* to be exempted, maybe you weren’t. But the kind of examples I’m thinking of are more like businesswomen who dress “professionally”, wearing makeup and low heels but not anything revealing like a miniskirt or halter top, believing themselves (I imagine) only to be presenting a serious, competent, clean, efficient image, who are unaware that guys like me find this exact look extremely hot :) Another case would be women with some (formal or informal) expectation of sexuality built into their job descriptions, e.g. bartenders or flight attendants.

BTW in my experience, it’s only when a really beautiful woman is confined to a small social group containing no available alpha guys that this phenomenon of “She’s so beautiful, she must be taken”, leading to no overt attention in her direction, actually takes place. Is your opinion of “beautiful/sexy” close to the male cultural norm in your area? If not, that would explain it; if so, I’m really surprised that your friend can’t drum up any attention in a public place like a bar. Personally I’m frequently intimidated by beautiful women, but usually in a large enough group of guys, there’s at least one guy who isn’t!

“Is your opinion of “beautiful/sexy” close to the male cultural norm in your area? If not, that would explain it; if so, I’m really surprised that your friend can’t drum up any attention in a public place like a bar.”

I don’t live in the Hollywood Hills, but I have a number of female friends who are actresses and models. I do have my personal “type” of beautiful (say, Marie Louise Parker, Marisa Tomei, Michele Monaghan) that not every man would share, but I am quite confident I know beauty when I see it, even without makeup.

I’ not saying she couldn’t drum up attention. I said, she’s not seeing the attention she creates and she’s too beautiful for most men to approach. When they do, it not rarely borders on the ridiculous – say a guy kneeling in front of her, telling her how beautiful she was. No wonder she thought of it as a joke…

I see. Yes, those women you mention are very much the kind appreciated by the Western male cultural norm (and me :) ).

You should ask her out! :)

Seriously. She’ll quite possibly say no, and be puzzled if she had you pegged as just-a-friend material, but that doesn’t matter. If she wants to remain friends, and she most likely will, just keep behaving exactly as you did before. For me, realising that I could reveal myself to be a person with a sexual side, **and that my world wouldn’t self-destruct upon being turned down — that I could go on being a respectful and respected person**, was a big turning point. I felt like a weight had been lifted, because the other person knew my true feelings and decided to keep being friends with me anyway. Somehow that made the sexual tension much less “gnawing” for me.

Hope I’m not coming across as patronising on this, as I said I find beautiful women really intimidating myself so it’s not like I’m trying to be the big alpha guy here. I just want to see a decent guy experience some fun! :)

Sam, I just reread a couple of your earlier posts and it seems your problem is not so much with having the confidence to ask women out, but more with having the confidence to initiate physical actions that could lead to sex even when you’re certain she wants to (“the last mile” as it were). So my prodding in my last post might be less relevant than I thought.

I appreciate the intention :). And I do very much relate to the weight being lifted stuff.

I can’t say that I haven’t thought about it – 2 years ago, after we met. But at the point I wasn’t where I am now in my psycho-sexual development, so I wasn’t able to act on what I felt was nascent attraction towards me (about 2 years ago) and there are a few personal issues as well that make me wonder if “asking her out” would be such a clever idea. I don’t think she has me in a formal “just friends, no physical intimacy”-group of people, we were close to kissing twice in the last two years. We do meet for other stuff rather regularly, so who knows… and before Motley mentions that she was probably trying to tell me something by complaining about her lack of men – remotely possible, but I don’t think so because of how the conversation came about.

@Sam — Here’s the tricky question: How do you turn these two agendas into a single one? Because, as I perceive it, the rabid “protecting-ourselves…” agenda is often executed in a manner that is certainly perceived in a “suppressing-male-desire”-kind of way

Well, if people are buying into the stereotype that men’s desires are inherently dangerous and aggressive and unwanted (and it seems that both women and men are frequently buying into this), then I suppose that protecting women from assault would appear to “obviously” be the same as suppressing male desire. In other words, I think this problem arises from problematic stereotypes about male desire. And part of the problem with addressing that is that even most men don’t question those stereotypes.

As Motley notes, there seems to be a pretty large-scale concerted cultural effort out there to help people get over their loathing for female sexuality, but there’s no such effort for male sexuality.

@Motley — well, okay. Thanks for trying. We can both pitch in :P

If you assume that women aren’t lying about whether they enjoy street harassment, and that males and transmen (and science) aren’t lying about the effects of testosterone, then there is no unsettled debate.

The thing is, though, that the question isn’t actually whether men and trans men think there’s a T-effect; it’s whether the T-effect is actually caused by the T. As an example of what I’m getting at: placebos cure non-psychological diseases with some frequency. And that’s non-psychological diseases. Whereas nothing is more psychological than sex. If you want to affect someone’s sex drive, affecting their psychology around sexuality is often a great place to start. I’m not saying that men and trans men don’t experience some kind of effect that correlates with T, but I’m just not convinced that this effect is actually caused by the T rather than by other factors (such as, for trans men, “my whole life I’ve been feeling really weird about my sexuality partly because my body doesn’t seem right, and now my body is coming into line with what I want it to be, and simultaneously it’s coming into line with bodies that stereotypes inform me are expected to exercise sexuality freely, and now I feel able to exercise sexuality freely”).

That said, my experiences with female sexual dysfunction make me feel very wary of people who make up psychological-sexual explanations for other people when there’s a real physical problem that should be addressed (which happens all too often to women with FSD). So I don’t want to pose my theories as some kind of unshakeable certainty. But at the same time, my own past issues with FSD seem to have been wholly psychological. Not because I was consciously lying or avoiding, just because I didn’t know what I wanted.

@Tim — if so, I’m really surprised that your friend can’t drum up any attention in a public place like a bar

Getting hit on by a few people on the street or in bars is no evidence that a woman is attractive. I mean, like I said earlier, I’ve gotten hit on in public even when I went to some lengths to look unattractive. This isn’t because I’m incredibly hot, and it means that even if someone is hitting on me because I’m hot, I flash back to other times when people were approaching me for other reasons (eg to intimidate me, or just as an approach experiment — not that there’s anything wrong with approach experiments).

“And part of the problem with addressing that is that even most men don’t question those stereotypes.”

I don’t find that surprising at all. The classic/non-feminist narrative makes male sexuality a *social* management problem, not an individual problem (while keeping responsibility individual). In the feminist discourse (by and large), male sexuality is no longer considered a *social* management problem (women are exempted from controlling it), but an individual one (while making responsibility gendered – patriarchy/rape culture). But feminism did not (by and large) follow through with the logical consequence of that internalization, and change the narrative about male sexuality in a positive way… We’ve been there in the other thread, haven’t we? When I mentioned that Naomi Wolf quote about feminism having a big vocabulary about male sexual violence but hardly any vocabulary for talking positively about male sexuality. I think that would be a necessary step for an integration of the two agendas – don’t you think?

Clarisse:As Motley notes, there seems to be a pretty large-scale concerted cultural effort out there to help people get over their loathing for female sexuality, but there’s no such effort for male sexuality.
Question. Could this be the result of some combination of:
1. The thought that female sexuality is under attack but male sexuality is not.
2. An extension of the thought that girls/women are deserving of help while men/boys are not.
2a. Thinking that the current outlook on female sexuality is that the loathing is the result of external influence (meaning that those who engage in female sexuality are not responsible for the loathing but those outside of it are) while thinking that current outlook on male sexuality is that the loathing is the result of internal influence (meaning that those who engage in male sexuality only have themselves to hold responsible for the loathing.

The effects of supraphysiological levels of testosterone, used for male contraception, on sexual behavior and mood were studied in a single- blind, placebo-controlled manner in a group of 31 normal men. After 4 weeks of baseline observations, the men were randomized into two groups: one group received 200 mg testosterone enanthate (TE) weekly by im injection for 8 weeks (Testosterone Only group), the other received placebo injections once weekly for the first 4 weeks followed by TE 200 mg weekly for the following 4 weeks (Placebo/Testosterone group). The testosterone administration increased trough plasma testosterone levels by 80%, compatible with peak testosterone levels 400-500% above baseline. Various aspects of sexuality were assessed using sexuality experience scales (SES) questionnaires at the end of each 4-week period while sexual activity and mood states were recorded by daily dairies and self-rating scales. In both groups there was a significant increase in scores in the Psychosexual Stimulation Scale of the SES (i.e. SES 2) following testosterone administration, but not with placebo. There were no changes in SES 3, which measures aspects of sexual interaction with the partner. In both groups there were no changes in frequency of sexual intercourse, masturbation, or penile erection on waking nor in any of the moods reported. The Placebo/Testosterone group showed an increase in self-reported interest in sex during testosterone treatment but not with placebo. The SES 2 results suggest that sexual awareness and arousability can be increased by supraphysiological levels of testosterone. However, these changes are not reflected in modifications of overt sexual behavior, which in eugonadal men may be more determined by sexual relationship factors. This contrasts with hypogonadal men, in whom testosterone replacement clearly stimulates sexual behavior. There was no evidence to suggest an alteration in any of the mood states studied, in particular those associated with increased aggression. We conclude that supraphysiological levels of testosterone maintained for up to 2 months can promote some aspects of sexual arousability without stimulating sexual activity in eugonadal men within stable heterosexual relationships. Raising testosterone does not increase self-reported ratings of aggressive feelings.

“Getting hit on by a few people on the street or in bars is no evidence that a woman is attractive.”

It seems not, though I must admit I’m surprised by this. In an online discussion recently, a friend of a friend said she had been called a slut when wearing very conservative clothing, and she speculated that it was done because “she looked like the kind of person who would be shocked to hear it”. Several people, including one guy, came forward with the idea that catcalling is not in any way an attempt at seduction but rather just a power play, a way for “beta males” to gain status amongst their peers, or to feel powerful by intimidating someone less powerful than themselves. I reckon it can’t be *just* that, but maybe this really does account for a lot of street harassment. I guess I’m surprised because I’ve never personally leered at a woman for this reason, nor have I felt the urge to do so for this reason.

“Well, if people are buying into the stereotype that men’s desires are inherently dangerous and aggressive and unwanted”

I humbly remind you that such a stereotype contains more than a grain of truth — it describes me pretty accurately (although incompletely), even if it doesn’t accurately describe all or even most men. It’s really tempting, but really counterproductive, to try to describe how the world *is* in terms of how we would like it to be. Remember, even if that ugly stereotype is true of some man, he still has free will (or at least something indistinguishable from it), so it does not follow that that man is *entitled* to act in accordance with his urges.

Machina: Interesting study (well, I only read the abstract :) ). I was a bit confused by the introduction of the terms “eugonadal” and “hypogonadal” towards the end though, since I thought the intention was to determine the effect of T on men, and suddenly we’re talking about two subcategories of men that weren’t mentioned earlier. (Also I can only guess what those terms actually mean…) But from what I can tell, this study puts paid to speculation that T has no definite effect on interest in sex. A larger sample size would be nicer, mind you.

@Tim:
Just skimmed through the rest of the discussion since I was gone. I can certainly accept that some men experience their sexual urges that way. And in some respects I can relate. But for me it only comes into play in established sexual relationships, rather than with strangers or with friends outside of a sexual relationship.

@Clarisse:

“Well, if people are buying into the stereotype that men’s desires are inherently dangerous and aggressive and unwanted (and it seems that both women and men are frequently buying into this), then I suppose that protecting women from assault would appear to “obviously” be the same as suppressing male desire. In other words, I think this problem arises from problematic stereotypes about male desire. And part of the problem with addressing that is that even most men don’t question those stereotypes.”

Sure, but nearly all discourse about sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape revolve around male sexuality and female victimhood, both in popular culture and in feminism. There are exceptions (I recall one particularly good thread on Feministe), but they are very much not the rule.

And even so, talking about “women can be perpetrators too” doesn’t address it at all. It doesn’t counter the “male sexuality is bad” trope, it just adds “and female sexual can be bad too”.

To me it’s a bit like the news: if you watch the news all the time, you feel like whole world is just one big horrible place with nothing but terrible shit in it. Because they highly disproportionately report on bad things.

And I feel like feminism in general behaves the same way: discussing only the bad, over and over. And it’s important to do so, but it’s hard to avoid that playing into and heavily reinforcing a negative view of male sexuality.

In both cases (news and feminism) one solution would be to discuss the positive in proper proportion to balance it out. But it’s hard to imagine that actually happening.

@Sam:

“But feminism did not (by and large) follow through with the logical consequence of that internalization, and change the narrative about male sexuality in a positive way… We’ve been there in the other thread, haven’t we? When I mentioned that Naomi Wolf quote about feminism having a big vocabulary about male sexual violence but hardly any vocabulary for talking positively about male sexuality. I think that would be a necessary step for an integration of the two agendas – don’t you think?”

Yes. Yes yes.

To be honest, I wonder if feminism has properly positive language for talking about female sexuality either. They mostly just avoid negative language.

@Sam — It occurs to me that although we’ve been talking about this for literally months on all these threads, we haven’t actually talked at all about what a positive vocabulary for male sexuality might sound like. What kind of words and phrases do you think it would use? I mean, there are already a lot of words that have pretty positive connotations about male sexuality — “slut” vs. “stud” is the classic feminist example, where “stud” is a compliment and “slut” is an insult but they mean exactly the same things about sexual behavior and the only difference is a male subject vs. female.

@Danny — 1. The thought that female sexuality is under attack but male sexuality is not.
2. An extension of the thought that girls/women are deserving of help while men/boys are not. …

Sure, I figure those are all definitely factors. It definitely seems as though enemy #1 is the idea that male sexuality is inherently dangerous, though I guess it’s not really possible to figure out what “enemy #1” is when you talk about cultural factors :P

@Tim — I humbly remind you that such a stereotype contains more than a grain of truth — it describes me pretty accurately (although incompletely), even if it doesn’t accurately describe all or even most men.

Doesn’t it also contain a grain of truth about women’s sexuality? About everyone’s sexuality? I mean, it is possible for just about everyone’s sexuality to be dangerous and aggressive and unwanted.

@Cessen — To be honest, I wonder if feminism has properly positive language for talking about female sexuality either. They mostly just avoid negative language.

It’s funny — there have been movements to do this kind of thing (e.g. I think there was a kind of “earth mother women’s sexuality” type movement back in the 90s) but they don’t seem to have gained a lot of traction. I’d guess that it’s really hard to invent words that are intended to describe something as culturally complex as sexuality. I’d guess that it’s more productive to use words that describe the current state of affairs, which may mean that many of those words are simply going to end up having negative connotations … for example, there may not be that many mainstream attempts to create a “new positive female sexuality language”, but there are lots of attempts to reclaim negative words like “slut”.

“slut” vs. “stud” is the classic feminist example, where “stud” is a compliment and “slut” is an insult…

Thinking about it now, I’ve heard “slut” used as an insult plenty of times, but I can’t actually think of a time I’ve heard “stud” used without irony as a compliment. Anyone else, or is this just me?

Clarisse,Doesn’t it also contain a grain of truth about women’s sexuality? About everyone’s sexuality? I mean, it is possible for just about everyone’s sexuality to be dangerous and aggressive and unwanted.

Hell yeah. This kinda highlights the distinction between “true” and “meaningful.”

@Sam — It occurs to me that although we’ve been talking about this for literally months on all these threads, we haven’t actually talked at all about what a positive vocabulary for male sexuality might sound like. What kind of words and phrases do you think it would use? I mean, there are already a lot of words that have pretty positive connotations about male sexuality — “slut” vs. “stud” is the classic feminist example, where “stud” is a compliment and “slut” is an insult but they mean exactly the same things about sexual behavior and the only difference is a male subject vs. female.”

I don’t think “stud” and “slut” denote exactly the same thing, even though I agree that “slut” is generally used more often with respect to women. To me, the original difference comes from the value difference assigned to male and female sexuality – a stud is gaining value by bedding women, while the slut is losing value – but the positive connotation of stud (assuming it can be used in a non-ironic way) would not stem from having sex as such, but from being able to have sex *while overcoming the obstacle of the lower initial sexual value*, not necessarily quantitatively, while slut has a quantitative element for me. If there were a woman with generally agreed on lower sexual status – say, she were particularly unattractive – and she would still be successful with men – in a discriminatoryway, ie she’d choose herself whom to be attracted to -, I’d say she’d be a stud, and not a slut.

As for the vocabulary, you’re absolutely right, we never actually talked about that – and now that I tried to think about it, I realized that I have difficulties finding positive words to describe my own sexuality (not just in English), even though I can now relate positively to it. I remember being touched by the way Naomi Wolf described how she loves being “sheltered” by the male body. I suppose I should look at some songs to come up with words. I suppose what I am looking for is some kind of extended version of the saucebox-essay I linked to above – say a regular thread on feministing, where participants aren’t allowed to talk about problems with male sexuality but only about positive experiences.
Maybe they would find a positive feminist vocabulary for male sexuality.

I mean, there are already a lot of words that have pretty positive connotations about male sexuality — “slut” vs. “stud” is the classic feminist example, where “stud” is a compliment and “slut” is an insult but they mean exactly the same things about sexual behavior and the only difference is a male subject vs. female.

Sure. But stud has a lot of connotations behind it, and those connotations are not universally viewed as positive. As Sam noted, the slut/stud dichotomy is a symptom of how female and male sexuality are viewed (women give, men take). And if someone, such as myself, abhors the idea of being a “taker” (as is implied by “stud”) then it suddenly becomes a lot less complementary.

“Stud”, “player”, etc. are all “positive” in a sense. But they carry a lot of baggage too. At least to me, they bring to mind images of frat guys that take advantage of women and brag to each other about their sexual exploits. These words label someone as sexually predatory to a greater or lesser degree. Even if only by association with the quintessential “stud” or “player”.

It also occurs to me that the whole “stud”, “player”, etc. vocabulary is part of what influenced me to feel like male sexuality is toxic. Only one of many factors, of course. But still. So at least for me, the whole “stud” thing is a very double-edged sword. I certainly would not take it well if I were called a stud (in seriousness). And I suspect it actually contributes to a negative view of male sexuality over-all rather than a positive one, even if individually it’s a compliment.

Incidentally, I think from here on out when I hear someone call a woman a “slut” I’m going to correct them: “You mean stud, right?” That should be fun. ;-)

[…] that men are particularly vulnerable to the judgment of “creep.” Over a year ago, I wrote a series of blog posts on the problems of masculinity, and in Part 3 I noted that—unlike men—”I can be explicit […]

As a cis-male, mostly heteronormative man who is also an experienced dominant in the BDSM world, I can tell you this: We are not widely loved. We are the villains of the story. Admitting to my friends that I’ve tied up and caused pain to a woman – no matter how consensual – is anathema.

More dear to my heart than the bondage is that I like a woman who’s simply submissive. Who wants to prove herself to me, who wants to feel controlled and appreciated, who wants ME to feel powerful and in-control in the relationship. That too is anathema. Admitting that I like being catered to catches me all kinds of hell… accusations of being abusive and sociopathic follow, even though all I’ve admitted to is that I’m a Dom and have had consensual master/slave relationships… people judge without having seen or experienced it themselves, and suddenly every word or action that could be misinterpreted as an intent to abuse or control is more likely to be seen or heard as such.

I don’t see that liking to be on top is a uniquely masculine trait; but it’s definitely a trait that a man can catch a lot of crap for these days.

Your questions:
—
Why do I care about masculinity?

Because you might have sons. And they’ll struggle with the question.

Another answer is that you might have hidden preferences and possibly prejudices that come to the light of awareness once you have a clear idea of what being a man means.

But mostly, because you’re a writer, and having the answer to that question – a real answer – would make you a goddamned hero to millions of men. With the attendant book deals.

—
Next question: How can men be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine?

I have no idea. I’m not even sure it’s an attainable goal. The ‘non-oppressive’ part, that is.
—
Currently, masculinity includes ideas like the ‘kiss that sweeps a girl off her feet’ – which is NOT asked permission for beforehand.

As a man, I’m often faced with the issue of meeting that fantasy without accidentally raping a girl. Yes, I said accidentally, and I meant it. When your woman expects you to just KNOW when she’s wanting you to force your body on hers, accidents happen. What’s strange is that the women often don’t consider it rape, even though it can be legally defined as such. In her mind, it was consensual. But there was at no point permission given. This, sadly, is often what women DEMAND from men; one girl told me, ‘If I feel like I have a choice, I’ll always try to stop sex from happening. But I like it when a man just doesn’t ask.’ This is just too common in the dating arena to avoid or hold your nose and move on: as a man, you have to deal with women like this, or remain abstinent and possibly relationless.

Except in BDSM. There’s an expectation that the woman will usually agree at some point to having the man take control, instead of just assuming he will at some mysterious etheric signal. The difference is tangible. I’ve found it almost impossible to get non-BDSM women on board with the yes-means-yes concept of, ‘give me permission to kiss you, f*ck you, etc.’ But women in the scene expect it.

Normal women who *don’t* identify as especially submissive have written and consumed books, movies, and even porn in countless numbers that objectify and remove control from them, and a large part of women will tell you they’re drawn to commanding and demanding men.
—
There’s a dissonance: these women don’t want ALL men to have control over them; they just want a select few to be given permission to be commanding, controlling, etc. But at the same time, the desire is so pervasively expressed throughout our culture that it’s a standard applied to all men at some point. So it becomes a bone of contention: “Men” need to be supportive and non-oppressive, but “My man” needs to be a conquering Lothario.

Follow that road and you’ll find a lot of the issues men have with women. Being a supportive non-oppressive man, for many women, excludes the possibility that he’ll be the commanding presence that sweeps her off her feet and takes away any choice she has but to have blissful sex in his arms. (I’m citing stereotypes, not my own expectations.)

Many, many women who DON’T normally identify as submissive have told me they have fantasies of being woken up penetrated, of having their clothes taken off, of a man just grabbing their hair and forcing them to give a blowjob, etc.; this is what excites them. Again, I reiterate: these are not women who identify themselves as submissive. After all, they don’t have any particular fantasies about being tied up and spanked, and the other things are, in their minds, just normal things women might want.

But men who try to live up to these expectations are ‘creeps’. As you’ve pointed out in other articles.

Other women run into the challenge of dealing with men who’ve been emotionally bent by this double-bind. In so doing, they become suspicious and angry themselves, and feed into the problem.

That was a lot of words, so I’m reserving my answers for your other questions.

After more than a year away, I just came back on a whim to see if there have been any new responses, and I have to say that seeing Para’s was a treat.

Para, your perspective is particularly interesting because I think the double bind that a male dominant faces is more acute than for vanilla or submissive men. The women you’re interested in yearn for one thing but abhor another, and in your case there’s almost nothing separating those two things.

“Men” need to be supportive and non-oppressive, but “My man” needs to be a conquering Lothario.

[…] into one of these tired old traps. Sometimes, women try to do it for them, which, if done respectfully, can help bridge the gap between the understandably-skeptical feminists, and the men who are trying […]

About Clarisse

On the other hand, I also wrote a different book about the subculture of men who trade tips on how to seduce and manipulate women:

I give great lectures on my favorite topics. I've spoken at a huge variety of places — academic institutions like the University of Chicago; new media conventions like South By Southwest; museums like the Museum of Sex; and lots of others.

I established myself by creating this blog. I don't update the blog much anymore, but you can still read my archives. My best writing is available in my books, anyway.

I've lived in Swaziland, Greece, Chicago, and a lot of other places. I've worked in game design, public health, and bookstores. Now I live in San Francisco, and I make my living with content strategy and user research.